mwotw

Napster

I wrote this in 2000, right at the height of the madness.

Are any of you really surprised by the RIAA’s false assertions?

While Napster’s overwhelming popularity has certainly sent a transformative message to both consumers and businesses, the meaning and scope of that message have been distorted by the ensuing legal argument.

The Recording Industry Association of America has lied and exaggerated in its endictment of Napster. Napster and defenders have discovered the impotence of rhetorical arguments (even excellent ones) against claims of material harm (even fabricated and exaggerated ones).

Before embarking on a further condemnation of the RIAA’s recent actions, I think I should acknowledge a debt of gratitude to the RIAA, and to every person and company who has ever sought to make a buck from our desire to bop our heads and snap our fingers. But for the commercial avarice of Edison, and his every successor, we would still be crowding into our living rooms to hear cousins and amateurs pound the keys of the family Baldwin. It is both myopic and naive to “misunderstand” the recording industry’s profit motivation in this current debate.

In the Napster example we have an opportunity to glimpse once again what happens when technology blindsides the sleeping giant. The RIAA is perfectly ready to play dirty, even if it means lying, cheating and being generally uncool. The web may have been born of high ideals, but it was commerce that gave it effect. Presently, the public is very excited for all these cool new ways to get what we want, faster than ever before. The convenience imperative is pressuring some very powerful and entrenched companies to deliver or to step aside. Though today some of these “big players” have what seems like too much power, we cannot expect that they will give it up just to avoid being unpopular. The history of commerce is full of bully monopolies and ethically questionable corporate behavior. Any idea that we can extricate this tendency from business, while preserving its salutary economic effects, is, again, naive. Companies will do everything they can to compete and succeed. At times, those efforts will run counter to market sentiment.

Some of you will remember a time of gaiety and mirth long ago. A frolicsome time. A time when maidens and their fairy consorts swarmed in the forests. A time when the sighting of a unicorn was arguably life’s greatest gift to a mortal. Do you? I am not what you would call a “man’s man”, if you catch my meaning. No, I spend all the day’s “long” moments fastened to the rim of a glass. I peer out beyond my nose, over the blighted landscape. I see how the mists of despair and perdition are choking the life from the members of my lost tribe. Where are you, my brothers and sisters? I long to hear the stories of your survival. Great, epic pillars of literature shall we make of them, when once again we are together. I have lit my nightly fires for a thousand years of remembering, and for some longer span before then which I do not recall at all. I have listened for a fingernail against my door. I have loitered in the marketplace where travelers tell their yarns of ancient desert roads. We leave our marks, we do. Both subtle and grandiose. I saw one of you working at McDonald’s on Shattuck the other day, and never again. Where did you go? To whom do you tell your secrets at night, my friend? Ah! I am a fool waiting in an airport in the wrong city on the wrong day at the wrong gate, for a passenger who is sitting at home watching television. I may go home. But you are still invited to come “bliss” me today. I need it, bad. The Wind offers her guidance, as always. But I have learned to prefer the Touch Below, the Secret Water, playing as a current against my broken rudder.

poetry | berkeley