Digital Hits and Misses.

• Author: HARMON, AMY
• Position: Brief Article

Thanks to an online service called Napster, downloading free music is easier than ever, but that doesn't make it any more legal

When the local alternative rock station in Eugene, Oregon, listed the 300 top songs of the millennium last December, college freshman Adam Campbell decided it would be nice to own the entire collection. Two hours later, using the fast Internet connection in his University of Oregon dorm room and a new online service called Tapster, Campbell had retrieved 275 of the tunes--free. They sit nestled on his computer hard drive, along with 800 or so other songs he has accumulated the same way. "That's three days of continuous music," he says with pride.

The music industry is already disturbed about how easy it is to copy music via the Internet without paying for it. But in recent months Tapster has greatly magnified the threat. Acting like a music search engine, the software makes it easier to find and copy a far wider array of music. It also makes it easier for individuals to offer their own music collections to others. About a million people use the service every day, despite the distinct possibility that downloading music that's been copyrighted could be considered theft.

"There's an incredible disconnect out there between what is normal behavior in the physical world versus the online world," says Carey Sherman, the senior executive vice president and general counsel of the Recording Industry Association of America, a music-business trade group. "There are people who think nothing of downloading entire CD collections [from the Internet] who wouldn't dream of shoplifting from Tower Records."

In February, Shaman's organization filed a lawsuit against Tapster, based in San Mateo, California, seeking damages and an injunction that would effectively shut down the service. Tapster argues that it is not liable for music piracy because the service does not keep any of the music files on its own servers. The company says that its software simply allows people to share information, and that many of the songs that are traded have been authorized for copying by the copyright holders.

FAIR USE OR RIP-OFF?

The recording industry says it has no plans to prosecute individual users of Tapster, although copyright experts say the industry would have a very strong case because the "fair use" doctrine of copyright law gives consumers the fight to make copies of CDs only for their personal use. Still, plenty of music fans make tapes or...