Historically there's nothing new about this. When printing first appeared on the scene, there were a lot of efforts to control it, and, in fact, our current system of intellectual property law is built on a reaction to the abuses that went on in the British printing industry. When the British kings licensed printers in the early 17th century, they granted a monopoly. Unlicensed printers were prosecuted in the Star Chamber, a special court with extraordinary powers, and without the protection of trial by jury. This was a way for the crown to protect itself from people publishing things they didn't like, but also a way to extort political graft, which is a phenomenon you see today with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Congress.

But one of the big results of prosecuting printers in Britain was that a lot of them moved to the Netherlands. They decamped in large numbers and their descendants are still there. There are huge publishers still there directly because of the British licensing of printers.

So basically they built themselves a competitor. And now, there's a risk that this could happen again. The record industry is so hot to shut down Napster and the MPAA is so hot to shut down new technologies, but they're just going to create a bigger problem. These technologies are going to be replaced by new technologies that are much more difficult to draw revenue from. What you're going to find is new technologies designed explicitly to transfer files without paying anybody.

Intellectual property was not a given right. It's not in the Constitution. It's just a tool of social policy -- not to make people rich, but rather to promote innovation in the science and the arts. When the system is designed not to further this purpose -- just to keep people rich -- it will lose legitimacy. If copyright law itself comes to be seen as a tool for fat cats to oppress the masses (and you'd be surprised at the kinds of people I hear saying exactly that these days) then there may be a backlash that will harm the record companies even if they somehow manage to deal with the Napster phenomenon. And, frankly, that's fine with me.

Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America

I think it's a great triumph for copyright. The judge in clear and unambiguous language made it very clear that Napster wantonly violated copyright law. I don't think this is the end but it sends a message that copyright will not be ignored. It shows that the basic principle of copyright protection -- as made clear in the Constitution -- is very important.

Does it mean everyone lights a bonfire and goes home? Well, for our industry, we still have a window of time before piracy becomes rampant. Now, our companies are preparing business models to go online with movies to make them available at a fair and reasonable price.

We think the technological advancement that's going on is fantastic. It opens up a whole new global marketplace, but you cannot operate in an atmosphere where everything is free. If that happens, why would anyone bother to create? You just can't sit inert and let everyone take for free.

Of course, technology is going to go forward whether Napster exists or not. No law case is going to stymie technology, but we want to use that technology. That's why we're working with some of the smartest people in the technology world. There are a lot of people out there who are ready to help, willing to help legitimate technology defeat illegitimate. In the end, technology will defeat technology. There will be technology that can interrupt how things should be, but there will also be people on our side who will create technology that will baffle that illegitimate kind of innovation.

Dan Rodrigues, president of Scour, a Napster-like multimedia search engine that was sued last week by both the music and film industries

I'm disappointed. Although it's still a little unclear to us how that affects Scour or if it does, [Judge Patel's ruling] is a loss for music fans -- on the conceptual level, and even more broadly than just in terms of music; file-sharing and user-to-user exchanges should not be deemed illegal. And ultimately they won't be seen as that. I'm disappointed for consumers, but I think this is just a short-term setback. This is all par for the course. In the name of technological progress, there will always obviously be challenges along the way. But consumers have shown that there's a massive demand for this kind of activity. I don't think it's going away. Eventually, the music industry will catch on. The proposition of having a massive number of users connected in one big community provides a pretty compelling platform for their product. They will embrace it because it works for consumers.

Shawn C. Reimerdes, a former defendant in the DeCSS case, and lead developer of Yo!NK, a distributed file sharing application that borrows from both Napster and Gnutella technology

This is a total surprise. I was just on IRC when the announcement was made. Everybody is asking "What can I use to replace Napster on Friday?"

This changes a lot of things now. I assume the RIAA will not sue the second-generation file share apps for the moment, [and] Napster will be a nice buffer.

I think there will be a backlash as we see Napster develop into a real company, they want to be a puppet to the RIAA and this will hurt their image. People will turn to other services and technologies to get what they need. Who needs the politics? I just want to access some information. The Gnutella-style systems are the only way to avoid censorship in the end, and they will evolve with encryption and FreeNet-style file storing. The file sharing systems will grow openly with no control. Napster's architecture is very rudimentary but has opened a lot of people's minds about copyright and intellectual property. People want music for free and they will always be able to just download it. This weekend, millions of people will be downloading new file sharing tools; I wonder where they end up.

The Free Software Project
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