Metallica lawyer says Napster lawsuit was necessary to “set the ground rules for what music is worth”
“Those fans aren’t fans — fans pay for music and appreciate its value.”
Image: Emma McIntyre / Getty Images
Some may have felt outraged by the Napster lawsuit filed by Metallica, but the band’s lawyer at the time, Peter Paterno, maintains that what they did was necessary to “set the ground rules for what music is worth”.
For the uninitiated, the case began in 2000 when Lars Ulrich and his bandmates discovered that a demo version of their song I Disappear was being played on radio stations without their permission. The group eventually traced the leak to Napster, where the band’s entire catalogue was available to download for free. Metallica then responded with a lawsuit against the file-sharing service, ultimately leading to its shutdown.
While opinions often differ on whether Metallica should’ve handled the case differently, Paterno recently told Variety that the move was ultimately “fair”.
“Because they were basically thieves! It’s not a popular opinion. The popular opinion now is a sort of revisionist history that we shouldn’t have sued Napster, we should have worked something out with them — well, no, there was nothing to work out with them.”
“’You could have made a deal.’ What was the deal?” Paterno continued. “People were getting music for free. It was really necessary in order to set the ground rules for what music is worth. Those fans aren’t fans — fans pay for music and appreciate its value. It’s like Dre said when we told him about Napster,’ he said, ‘I work 24/7 in the lab and these guys just steal it? Screw them.”
According to Paterno, the rise of Napster and file-sharing sites like it had led to a significant drop in the music industry’s revenues.
“We went from a business that was doing $30 billion a year to doing a third of that in three or four years,” he said. “People’s creativity [was] not being rewarded. I’ve never agreed with that.”
Metallica’s lawsuit against Napster is often cited as a turning point in the history of digital music sharing. In particular, the case marked the beginning of the debate surrounding the ethics of online file-sharing and its impact on artists’ livelihoods.