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Morning News

Senate Panel to Hear Festering Feud Over Music on the Internet

Aired July 11, 2000 - 10:18 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: On Capitol Hill this hour, a Senate panel hears a festering feud over music on the Internet. The Napster Web site is being sued by rock band -- by a rock band, happens to be Metallica, for letting users swap its songs without permission. The band, Metallica, says that it is copyright infringement. Napster says, it is a legal service. Music lovers say the free downloads are great.

Kathleen Koch, who I bet is a huge Metallica fan. You just strike me as a Metallica kind of girl, Kathleen.

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I have all their albums, every single one.

KAGAN: Well, you're on Capitol Hill. You are going to explain.

KOCH: I paid for them, I didn't download.

KAGAN: OK, let's be clear. What do we have going on with this hearing?

KOCH: Well, we ate looking at the technology of Napster, Pneutela (ph), other ways that people can download music for free from the Internet. And it is easy, obviously, to see why that technology is such a hit, especially among young people, teenagers, people on college campuses, because basically the technology lets them search one another's hard drives for music for entire albums that they like. Once they find what they want, they download it on to their own computers, and they pay absolutely nothing for it.

Now Napster, and those who use it, say that they are just swapping songs, that no money changes hands, and so they are not violating copyright. But the recording industry says that Napster is guilty of out and out piracy. That it is robbing them of royalties, and they want Congress to outlaw it.

Well, the chest-baring members of the heavy metal band Metallica decided to fight back, when they found one of their songs still in progress that they were writing for "Mission: Impossible II" pop up on Napster.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARS ULRICH, METALLICA MEMBER: Basically, when -- about three months ago, when one of our song was being played on radio stations all across the country before the song was finished, before we had -- actually it was a work in progress, and we sat there and traced it down to the source. And the source was a company called Napster, we decided that a line had been crossed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOCH: Overall CD sales are up. A recent study showed that sales of CDs and tapes at record stores near college campuses, where again Napster is very popular, have plummeted.

This argument actually echoes back to the one that occurred in the 1980s when TV and movie studios were attacking the VCR. But, obviously, as we all know, that, instead of hurting profits, created a whole new stream of revenue. And now videos are the main profit engines for movie studios. So many observers believe that, perhaps, the recording industry will eventually stop fighting these technologies and instead find a way to capitalize on them.

Reporting live on Capitol Hill, I am Kathleen Koch.

KAGAN: Kathleen, thank you very much.

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