Last time we talked about Napster, I mentioned it's 'misuse' in allowing commercially-available music to be distributed for free. Napster didn't really design itself for this (or did it?), but it's getting slammed with criticism for being the progenitor of it all. Metallica, Dr. Dre have slapped lawsuits on Napster, while the Offspring (in an attempt to call "hypocrite") have made peace and joined forces... what's going on?

Napster has it's great side. Example: you've looked ALL over for that missing early song by Slowdive which you could only import special-order through Let It Be, but it isn't even in print anymore, it will cost you over $20 and will take weeks to get to you. Look it up in Napster and you could have it in minutes. Didn't want to spend $15 on The Cure's "Galore" just for that one extra song - and not knowing if it was any good? Find it on Napster in minutes. It's great for filling out those holes in your music collection.

Napster has it's bad side. In order to download a song, you've usually got to find about 10 copies of it and attempt to download them all. Usually one will succeed while all the others will fail. That's about a 10% success rate. 10% of those successful downloads are corrupted. I had heard that a college student actually "acquired" the entire David Bowie catalog and burned his own copies to CD. Imagine the time and effort it took to actually go through and FIND every song, SUCCESSFULLY download it, RE-ORGANIZE it, and BURN it on to CDs. Not to mention no artwork, liner notes, etc... it's too much work for most people!

Next time: it's direct effects on the music industry (as it stands today!)...