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with the prestige of being at least somewhere in Napster's hip hierarchy. Napster staffers began watching the chat rooms and nominating the most helpful participants for moderator status. Those moderators in turn nominated others, and debates ensued in a new moderator e-mail list over who was qualified to give advice on the system and who was vouching for whom.

One recurring debate was whether chatters with backgrounds in the more complex world of IRC were necessarily better than others. But as in debates over admission in any self-selecting club, the discussions could get petty. At times, one moderator would oppose electing anyone sponsored by another moderator he didn't like. A code of conduct was distributed on the moderator e-mail list, requiring them all to be both helpful and circumspect. “As active participants in a revolution, you must be conscious of what is and is not the concern of others,” the document said. “Internal Napster Inc. affairs are just that. You will not disclose information about the workings of the clients [user-side programs], including, but not limited to, the number of servers, server IP's [Internet locations, or] new clients in test.” Moderators also got the authority to require users to change their on-screen nicknames from offensive handles. In the way of the Internet, this led to prolonged arguments about users who outsmarted the automated filters by using nicknames like “flulclklylolu.” On the moderator mailing list, some argued against all bans. “This thread has kept me confused,” a moderator named “interline” wrote. “I understand the majority of you are against the censorship the riaa is trying to force upon us. Is there a reason that we are banning ‘badword’ nicks? . . . let’s fight censorship, not start it.”

The subject was one of the few among the moderators that prompted Shawn to take a stand. “I totally dislike what is happening here,” he wrote on February 18, 2000, noting that the filters would catch the worst abusers. “Are you telling me we have banned over 5000 people simply because they have cuss words in their username (even legitimate swears?) I'm sure the value of these users in terms of contribution to the community far outweighs the fact that their usernames may be offensive.”

Three days later, Ritter stepped in as the grown-up. “Censorship sucks, but so do assholes,” he wrote to the group. “I have personally