" He walked down the line, greeting people by name, shaking
hands, marveling at the gewgaws and gimcracks that he, after all, had
found in some nighttime dumpster and brought back to be recycled. "God,
I love this. It's like Napster for dumpsters."
"How's that?" Alan asked, pouring himself a coffee and adding some UHT
cream from a giant, slightly dented box of little creamers.
"Most of the music ever recorded isn't for sale at any price. Like 80
percent of it. And the labels, they've made copyright so strong, no one
can figure out who all that music belongs to -- not even them! Costs a
fortune to clear a song. Pal of mine once did a CD of Christmas music
remixes, and he tried to figure out who owned the rights to all the
songs he wanted to use. He just gave up after a year -- and he had only
cleared one song!
"So along comes Napster. It finds the only possible way of getting all
that music back into our hands. It gives millions and millions of people
an incentive to rip their old CDs -- hell, their old vinyl and tapes,
too! -- and put them online. No label could have afforded to do that,
but the people just did it for free. It was like a barn-raising: a
library raising!"
Alan nodded. "So what's your point -- that companies' dumpsters are
being napstered by people like you?" A napsterized Inventory. Alan felt
the *rightness* of it.
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