Chuck D & Others Testify At Hearings On Napster, Anti-Metallica Sentiment Continues

05/25/2000 6:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen

(5/25/00, 6 p.m. ET) - The House of Representatives Small Business Committee held a hearing Wednesday (May 25) to discuss the controversial music-swapping software Napster. Those who testified included Public Enemy frontman Chuck D; Peter Harter, vice president of Global Public Policy and Standards of Emusic.com; and Tom Silverman, founder of Tommy Boy Records.

Dwayne Andrews, spokesperson for the House Small Business Committee told LAUNCH what the next step is after Wednesday's hearing. "Well what happens is we'll be able to look at the transcripts and a lot of the letters for the record that we've received from a lot of the interested parties and continue to monitor the debate and if there is need for legislation on down the road whether it be regarding copyright issues or other issues dealing with online music, we'll be better equipped to make some of the decisions that we need to make further on down the road," he said.

Hole's Courtney Love didn't testify, but she did chime in with her opinions on Napster and the distribution of music via the Internet at the recent Digital Hollwood conference. "I'm not threatened by Napster," she said, "I'd rather have a 100 million people hear a song, than less than a million through the old-school distribution system. There were 1 billion music downloads last year, so how is Napster hurting the music industry? It's not. The only people scared of Napster are people who have filler on their albums, frankly, and are scared that if people hear more than one single, they're not going to buy the record. A committed piece of musical work is mastered better and packaged better than anything a cruddy MP3 file can provide."

The House's Small Business Committee is still taking comments about Napster as the debate will remain open for at least two more weeks. The findings will be used to decide on future legislation by Congress, but as for now Andrews said that lawmakers are taking a wait-and-see approach.

Meanwhile, anti-Metallica sentiment is growing as a site, zeropaid.com, is supplying Metallica with names of one-time fans who will no longer support the band. The organization is collecting names in response to Metallica presenting Napster with names of fans who downloaded their music.

-- Darren Davis, New York

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