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worked 9 to 5, I expected to get a fucking paycheck every week. It’s the same with music; if I’m putting my fucking heart and all my time into music, I expect to get rewarded for that. I work hard . . . and anybody can just throw a computer up and download my shit for free. That Napster shit, if that gets any bigger, it could kill the whole purpose of making music. . . . I’ve seen those little sissies on TV, talking about [how] ‘The working people should just get music for free,’ I’ve been a working person. I never could afford a computer, but I always bought and supported the artists that I liked. I always bought a Tupac CD, a Biggie CD, a Jay-Z CD. If you can afford a computer, you can afford to pay $16 for my CD.”

The record industry’s biggest public-relations victory came in mid-April 2000, when the long-standing San Francisco hard-rock group Metallica filed suit against Napster in federal court. Metallica accused the company not only of copyright violations but also of running afoul of the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO, through its repeated transgressions. Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich said the band had gone through “a grueling creative process” for each song since its 1983 debut. “It is therefore sickening to know that our art is being treated like a commodity,” Ulrich said. “From a business standpoint, this is about piracy—aka taking something that doesn’t belong to you, and that is morally and legally wrong.” Richardson was quoted as saying that the band had never tried to contact Napster. If it had, she claimed, it could have learned about ways to “leverage” the Napster system. Rap star Dr. Dre, whom the Napster kids liked even more than Metallica, also sued and demanded that his songs be removed.

The Metallica suit, which named Indiana University, Yale, and the University of Southern California as additional defendants, succeeded in driving a wedge through Napster’s supporters. But filing it was a costly decision, image-wise. Even most Metallica listeners sided with Napster, proclaiming that the band had sold out years before, perhaps when the members cut their hair. A few noted that Metallica’s popularity had been built in its early days precisely through unauthorized tape-swapping. And someone hacked Metallica’s site, leaving the words “Leave Napster Alone.” An ex-fan of the group launched Killmetallica.com and called for a boycott of the band’s products. The site was joined by Metallica-

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