ABSTRACT
The rise in peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, of consumers freely sending digital MP3 audio files to one another, threw the recording industry into a panic at the close of the century. The industry had dealt with similar crises before, most noticeably in the early 1980s, when the threat of blank cassette sales and illicit duplication prompted the memorable slogan, “home taping is killing music.” Such concerns seemed relatively minor, however, when compared with the emergence of the online service Napster, and its rapidly expanding millions of users. And this time, it was not just the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) that sought legal recourse, but some music artists as well. When the heavy metal group Metallica learned in early 2000 that a demo of their song “I Disappear,” set to appear on the Mission Impossible II soundtrack, had been leaked on Napster, they followed the RIAA’s lead and filed a lawsuit for copyright infringement. Soon after, in a dramatic gesture, drummer Lars Ulrich (born 1963) engineered a press conference at Napster’s main office, where he handed them thirteen boxes containing the names of more 335,000 users who had illegally shared Metallica’s music, and demanded that they be removed from the service. Two months later, a Senate Judiciary Committee invited Ulrich to appear as part of a hearing on Internet music services. Ulrich’s statement, included here in its entirety, not only expresses Metallica’s own individual concerns over the control of intellectual property, but also implies the tragic effects that music theft will have upon the recording industry’s many anonymous everyday employees.1 In another strategic move, Ulrich seeks to counter the prevailing media image of Napster as a rebellious grassroots tech uprising, and instead emphasizes the organization’s own desires to protect their copyrighted interests. Ulrich’s stance, while certainly rational in its tone, ultimately earned Metallica a wave of negative publicity, for he unwittingly demonized consumers while failing to grasp the complexities of file sharing. Some Metallica fans, for example, were encouraged to buy CDs or attend concerts because they had first heard a free audio file. While the industry would eventually win its case against Napster, it proved to be a hollow victory. As physical sales of CDs declined at a staggering rate throughout the 2000s, the industry struggled to contain the inevitable spread of digital downloading. In this light, the industry’s refusal to embrace Napster’s potential was increasingly portrayed as a devastating, even fatal, missed opportunity.
