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when somebody fucks with what we do, we go after them." thus spoke drummer lars ulrich in an interview about metallica's lawsuit against napster. other than the complete absence of guitar solos on st anger, nothing has hurt metallica more than the napster fiasco.
in 1999, shawn fanning, a freshman at northeastern university, stayed awake for 60 hours straight writing the code for a program that would change the music scene forever. napster, named after its author's nappy hair, allowed people to connect to its centralised file server and share music. the genius of napster was that its server did not host any songs at all. instead, it simply provided a listing of songs that were on other people's personal computers and allowed you to download directly from them for free. word spread and soon millions of people were sharing music over the internet.
it didn't take long before recording artists, music labels, and the recording industry association of america (riaa) began to complain. the riaa sued napster in december 1999, arguing that it was helping people to pirate copyrighted music "on an unprecedented scale". a few months later, in april 2000, metallica sued. lars went on record saying that users of napster were "trafficking in stolen goods" and that this was "morally and legally wrong".
initiallly, napster was defiant. the company refused to remove metallica's content from its listings unless "metallica could provide proof of specific violations". so metallica hired netpd, a british company, to monitor napster. after a 48 hour period they had catalogued 1.4 million violations. a few hours later lars ulrich personally delivered thirteen boxes of documents that fingered 335,435 napster usernames who were trading metallica songs. within a week napster had banned most of those users. the legal battles dragged on until july of 2001, when metallica finally reached a settlement with napster. but the damage had been done, and things would never be the same for metallica or its fans.
were the fans right to be angry at metallica? or was metallica right to take action against napster? from the beginning, lars claimed, "this is not just about money." but many fans didn't buy that. his comment implies that it is partly about money. this interpretation is supported by other comments that singer and guitarist james hetfield made during on online chat: "would you go do your job five days a week for absolutely nothing, just to do it?... this could kill metallica and music if we were doing it for free." but then, shortly before he was to testify in front of the united states senate in a hearing on internet music distribution, lars said: "it's just got nothing to do with money." nothing? first, he implied it partly dealt with monet. then james made it seem that it was all about money. now it had "nothing" to do with money. which was it?
in fairness to lars, i believe it is possible to resolve his seemingly contradictory statements. lars's point appears to be that metallica was not suing napster in order to win a sum of money. metallica already had a lot of money, and any money they were losing to napster was "pocket change". but the lawsuit was about money in the sense that artists' work should be protected so that they could earn a living. metallica was simply standing up for artists' rights. this interpretation is supported by lars's clearest statement of this point: "it's about the principle of the thing and it's about what could happen if this kind of thing is allowed to exist and run as rampant and out of control for the next 5 years as it has been for the last 6 months. then it can become a money issue. right now it's not a money issue. i can guarantee you it's costing us tenfold to fight it in lawyers' fees, in lawyers' compensation, than it is for measly little pennies in royalties being lost, that's not what it's about... where it can affect people, where it is about money, is for the band that sells 600 copies of their cd, ok? if they all of a sudden go from selling 600 copies of their cd down to 50 copies, because the other 550 copies get downloaded for free, that's where it starts affecting real people with real money."
the focus on artists' rights not only heps explain the quotations about money and earning a living, but it also explains metallica's talk about "control" and "property". on july 27, 2000, after a district court ruled in metallica's favour, the band issued a statement: "we are delighted that the court has upheld the rights of all artists to protect and control their creative efforts."
metallica was making a moral argument that artists, because they create and own their art, have certain rights. these include the right to sell their art, to control how it is sold, and to decide if they wish to give it away for free. what troubled lars was that people were acting as if "they have a right to any piece of information that comes to them through the internet". had he been taling about physical property, such as a car, i doubt many would have disagreed with him. after all, no one wants their car stolen.
what is important about the napster case is that it involved intellectual property, not physical property. napster's central file server did not even store any songs. it just helped individuals trade digital songs with each other. how ironic then that metallica was now against music trading when it was the underground tape trading of their demo no life 'til leather that led to their success. how could metallica, a band that envouraged fans to "bootleg" their own shows, be against napster? was this hypocrisy? was there a contradiction within metallica's argument against file sharing?
