MP3s should be free

Monday was a sad, sad day for music fans and college students across the United States. A federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that Napster has to lock out all users who trade copies of copyrighted music for free. In other words, those of us who have been using the wonder of the Internet to download MP3s now have lost the biggest entity fighting for our right to rip off record companies.\nThe case is not necessarily over, because Napster plans to appeal the ruling and take any possible route to stay open. But for all intents and purposes, the days of free trading of music on Napster are coming to an end. \nI have never used Napster. I have always gone to other MP3 sites for my downloading pleasure, such as Scour (until that got shut down) and Spinfrenzy. And I'm sure there are plenty of other sites you or one of your friends use to download music, especially because our wonderful University has banned the use of Napster from its servers. I think Mark Cuban took them to task last semester for that, so I won't go there.\nThe true joy of these sites is the ability to download any song we want to listen to on our computer, or even burn onto a CD. I can't imagine how much money I have saved by not having to purchase some CD just because I liked one of the songs. \nAnd, while I don't know about all of you, I don't have lots of money to throw around. Most of my money goes toward beer, food and, well, beer. So, my CD purchases are few and far between, so they must be quality purchases. Downloading MP3s has saved me from purchasing the all too dreaded one-hit wonder CDs. \nIt's true MP3 exchange sites are not what one would necessarily call "legal," because the songs are copyrighted. The thing about it is, the free exchange doesn't hurt the bands nearly as much as the recording companies, which is why you see mostly record companies taking the Web sites to court. There are some artists -- Metallica, Dr. Dre and Eminem to name a few -- who are against the trading of MP3s, and that's fine. But there are plenty of artists out there -- Limp Bizkit and the Dave Matthews Band among them -- who think this is a great idea. \nI came up with a solution to this problem. I think sites such as Napster should ask the artists for permission to allow free trading of their songs. If the artist agrees, his or her songs can be traded online at no charge. If a band does not agree, its songs would be banned from the site.\nMP3s have too many good qualities to be wiped off the Internet. I know the ruling is not against all MP3s, simply the free trading of them, but I think the reason they are so popular is the fact that they are free. As I said, being saved from buying a bad CD is one of the advantages, but another is the publicity they can generate for a band. \nLocal bands in Bloomington can use free MP3 trading to generate a buzz and get their own music out to the audience for which they play. A few guys I know in one local band have put several of their songs in MP3 format on their Web site, and many people have downloaded them. This helps them build a bigger fan base. \nNapster is still trying to fight the ruling, but things are starting to look bad for it. And once it finally falls, should it happen, the record executives and Metallica will turn their attention to another Web site, such as Spinfrenzy or iMesh. Take advantage of these sites while you still can, and give the record company executives the bird one last time.