Without rehashing the entire "Is Napster the Antichrist?" argument we go through occasionally, this IS one of the occasions where damage is done by shutting down the service. When I had the connection and memory for it, I used Napster on several occasions to download songs that I could not find for sale ANYWHERE - on the web, in the record stores, what have you. Quite a few other songs could only be found as part of tremendous (and tremendously expensive) collections. Unfortunately, even with these collections, 99% of the artists featured will not see a penny for the sales of them. They're considered 'fair use' by the record companies that own the rights, and even if the artists still live, chances are that there will not be any re-releases of the original material while any rights holder could possibly lay claim to any portion of the profits.

Without discussing the rights and the wrongs of MP3 et al, I'll just say - an alternative is needed. The current situation bottles up the vast majority of music created within the past century, and with the fairly regular extensions that RIAA and the major labels push through congress it's likely that the material will NEVER enter public domain.

That's not what it was created for. It's wrong.

M