Congress heard testimony today from a number of industry types regarding whether file-sharing technology, like Napster, is really as evil as the recording industry would like us to believe.

The main purpose behind the hearings was to help determine if file-sharing is outright theft, or a legitimate technology. This particular hearing was so popular that it brought the largest crowds for a hearing since Watergate. The Judiciary Committee did not take any actions but might choose to legislate on this matter sometime in the near future.

There were a great number of speakers that testified before Congress, both for and against the whole idea of file-sharing, and Napster in particular. Lars Ulrich, the self appointed spokeman for heavy metal rock group Metallica, was the first witness to testify. The basic jist of what he had to say boiled down to one statement: the artist should have the choice whether their creation is given away or sold.

In yet another misconception, one that many people have, that shows that Lars is unfamiliar with technology in general, and Napster specifically, he said, "In a 48-hour period where we monitored Napster, over 300,000 users made 1.4 million free downloads of Metallica's music. Napster hijacked our music without asking." If he had even the slightest clue as to how Napster works then he would understand that Napster did not hijack anything. We all know that Napster does not store any of the MP3's available on their servers, but merely acts as the conduit that allows Napster users to interact with each other, whether chatting, browsing files or transferring files.

Hank Barry, the CEO of Napster, testified and said that the company does not copy the MP3 files, but essentially acts as a way for people to sample music before buying it. Napster, in no way, shape or form, requires users to download the MP3 files available, but allows users to view the musical tastes of others users. "What 20 million people are doing is sharing music. They do it for previewing purposes, for sampling purposes and they're going out and buying CDs," Barry said.

There were a host of other witnesses at the hearings, including Jim Griffin, Fred Erlich and Gene Kan. I am going to set the record straight here, because MANY other news sources are giving foul information regarding Gene Kan. These other sources list him as being "one of the developers of the Gnutella computer music file transfer program." This is just NOT TRUE. This guy, like the other people that are part of the gnutella.wego.com website, did not have anything to do with the original program. All Gene did was write a Unix port of it...that is all. This, after the protocol was reverse engineered by someone else. Gnutella was a creation by Tom and Justin of Nullsoft.

Another of the witnesses found in Washington today was Hilary Rosen, the president of the Recording Industry Association of America. The RIAA, who has sued Diamond Multimedia, MP3.com, Napster and, most recently, MP3Board, all on MP3 related issues, was there to try and further it's cause against MP3's. Senator Orrin Hatch had an interesting question and answer period with her. It started out with the Senator asking Rosent, "''Can I make a copy of a CD that I buy and put it into a car?"

"The answer is yes," Hilary said, as she sat uncomfortably at the microphone awaiting the oncoming barrage of questions.

"Is it fair use to give the copy to my wife for her car? ''Is it fair use for me to rip a CD? Is it fair use if (a computer network) decides for efficiency reasons that one copy is sufficient to serve for storage, instead of keeping 200 separate copies, is that fair use?" Hatch asked. He even went on to ask if she thinks that making an audiocassette of a CD to give to a spouse constitutes fair use.

"None of these is fair use," Hilary argued, continuing on to say that artists tolerating people making copies of their works is merely "no good deed goes unpunished." Finally, she ended by saying that Senator Hatch is "leading me down the Napster path." What she ended up saying here is that it is not fair use for a spouse to make an audiocasette of a CD and give it to the other. Is that incredible or what?

It will be interesting to see what, if anything, comes out of these hearings. Do not look for anything to happen tomorrow, or next week, but nonetheless this made our legislature aware of a problem. Hopefully something can be done to rectify the recording industry's stranglehold on distribution. No matter what happens, file sharing will not die; do not expect Congress to just up and make file sharing illegal, because that cannot happen. Only time will tell.