Napster Piracy

Lyrics © 2000 Stephen Savitzky. CC-by-nc-sa.\  To the tune of Barrett's Privateers by Stan Rogers

Lyrics [pdf] [txt] [cho]

Oh the year was Nineteen Ninety Eight
How I wish I was on Freenet now
When people first heard of MP3
And music out on the Web for free.
God damn them all! I was told
You download all your computer can hold
We'd take our music and pay no fee
Now I owe three years' pay in royalty
Because of Napster piracy
Shawn Fanning he wrote a program kewl
How I wish I was on Freenet now
A fairly trivial piece of code
For sharing files from node to node

But the clever part was the Napster site
How I wish I was on Freenet now
Where people could trade their songs for free
And pay not a nickle of royalty.

So I got a big disk and a cable line
How I wish I was on Freenet now
Then I logged on and began to get
The biggest collection on the net

There were thousands of songs there up for grabs
How I wish I was on Freenet now
I was hooked up in one of the fastest ways
But to fill a hundred gig took two whole days

At length they were sued by RIAA
How I wish I was on Freenet now
They said ``You have done us many wrongs
To go and make copies of all our songs.''

But Napster said ``There's no music here.''
How I wish I was on Freenet now
``We're a kind of search engine, don't you know.
(Our users may have some trouble, though)''

So it looks like Napster may get off clean
How I wish I was on Freenet now
I laughed 'til the summons came down for me
And the charge they made was piracy.

Well I learned my lesson and paid my fine
How I wish I was on Freenet now
But they can't take my MP3's away
'Cause I got Gnutella yesterday.