Metallica is suing Napster

Metallica is suing Napster for copyright infringement. Now, I’m not a musician, but I’m rather attuned to the whole copyright issue. At the bottom of this page is the ubiquitous © or (c) copyright notice. My history is none too good, but if I recall, a similar hue and cry was raised when cassettes were introduced. Then the same question occurred when video cassettes became commonplace. One Gemini had a fine assessment about the whole question, “Sure, some people have the time to sit there and trade the music back and forth, but take someone like me, I’m too lazy to download all the music — I’ll just buy the CD.” Last Xmas, I knew Sister was going to get a CD Burner, so I carefully selected a collection of music I wanted on a CD. A little of this, a little of that, a fair sampling of my tastes. But after I got it all together, it was really too much trouble to put it all on one CD. The web plays havoc with copyrights. Strictly speaking, it’s illegal to copy something from my page on the web, and forward it on — especially without an attribution. But no one is suing Netscape or Microsoft, at least, not that I know. When some unnamed person was incensed at a reading, and copied my photo image off the web, diddled in a bad word and added a mustache, that could have been grounds for a lawsuit. Not worth the time, if you ask me. It’s on the web, it’s open season. I was at Threadgill’s yesterday, long enough to work my way through a vegetable plate, two Virgo’s and a reading, then I wandered downtown to deposit the check. From there, it’s not much of a stroll, and I discovered that the Post Office had a sale going on stamps, so I squandered what little cash I had left over on a couple of books of stamps. I found this great deal, too: $1 stamps, five for just $5. Got to get Ma Wetzel’s Mother’s Day gift in the mail.