FREE MUSIC ON THE NET:PROS AND CONS If one had a choice between paying and listening to a song for free most would probably opt for the latter. While websites like Napster (www.napster.com) - which incidentally claims to have over 60 million listeners - seem to have "revolutionized" the delivery of music there have been some problems related to intellectual property copyright issues. In fact, in recent months, Junoon is the only Pakistani band to come out openly against Napster saying that downloading songs from such sites is a form of theft as the artist is not compensated and hence Napster violates copyright laws. Even PTV, Pakistan Radio and both the FM channels have yet to pay a penny in royalties to any Pakistani band. So while the government tells foreign countries and entities, specially America and the World Trade Organization (vis-a-vis TRIPS, or Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights), about its 'commitment' to copyright laws, it uses music of local bands without paying them a penny in royalty. In fact, it's generally the other way round, as this permanent non-paying attitude has led to a situation where our bands are more than happy to have their videos aired on PTV for the simple reason that you can't beat the publicity, and who would want to miss such an opportunity in any case. This also means that PTV can actually use this as a kind of leverage against any musician or band who might want to raise the issue of royalty. Anyone with a computer at home and an Internet account can listen to free music by accessing various websites. Napster is probably the best known because like amazon.com it has been in the news for quite some time, and because a leading US rock group, Metallica, actually sued it for copyright infringement. Napster basically works like this: whoever is logged on the website can access music files (called 'mp3' files) of other people logged on. Such files can either be stored in the memory of a computer or on a floppy or a compact disc. It actually doesn't matter in which drive the mp3 file is stored as long as it's on the computer. This is quite similar to people sharing their cassettes and videotapes with each other, and that was the main defence that the people who run Napster took when they were sued. Metallica's suit was basically a case of using someone's artistic or creative work and not paying royalty on it. The principle used by the group's lawyers was pretty straightforward in that a radio station has to pay a royalty each time the band's song is played. Now whether the song is being played on the net or on the radio or TV the principle of compensation shouldn't change. In response to Napster's lawyer's defence that the site is just an online version of people sharing their music tapes, the group said that the sharing was going on at such a huge level that it could not be anything but of a commercial nature. To an extent that is a correct argument because while a copyrighted original movie may be copied for personal use, it cannot certainly be lent out to a thousand people with the original lender claiming that copyright laws are not being violated. In this context, an interesting discussion took place between local musicians and a large audience, made up mainly of computer users. In fact, at least several dozen people had to be turned away from the seminar, held on the sidelines of an Internet expo organized by the University of Karachi, because of lack of space. Fakhir Mehmood, Faisal Kapadia of Strings, a singer of Ganda Banda and Three-D Cats, Ali Tim (who plays with Ali Haider), and Junoon's manager Shehryar Ahmad spoke on the occasion, with varying degrees of support and opposition against the whole Napster sharing concept. Many people from the audience, including the organizer of the event, Anila Weldon (who runs an Internet bulletin board service called Weldon BBS), said that there was nothing wrong with the Napster because at the end of it all people now had the chance to listen to free music from anywhere in the world. A couple of people in the audience criticized the music being made by local bands as frivolous and anything but original. In fact one young woman said that most albums and CDs these days had at the most two good or decent songs and the rest was all katchra. When she said this Fakhir Mehmood seemed a bit peeved and said that a good or a bad song was a matter of opinion. Shehryar Ahmad was the most outspoken against Napster saying that it was a simple case of copyright violation and agreed with Metallica's position on the subject. Later, Fakhir said that it was alright as long as royalties were paid to the bands. But there seemed to be little discussion on how royalties were to be paid in such an arrangement, specially when people logging on to the Internet can be from any country in the world. One member of the audience did come up with the suggestion that software could be developed where a royalty could be paid each time a song was heard, but his explanation was quite vague because it did not account for how and through what mechanism the payments would be made. Credit cards can be used but most local ones cannot be used generally on websites. Ms Weldon said that Napster was the "largest and the most diverse online community of music lovers" and that over 60 million people used it all over the world. She said that the good thing about it was that anyone could listen to music from anywhere and hence new artists could use it as a springboard. Fakhir said that since not many Pakistani bands were known internationally, the Internet could be a good medium for spreading their music. On the other hand, a senior journalist commented that established bands like Junoon seem to be against Napster as they did not appreciate promotion at the expense of the violation of their artistic property rights. .