NAME: alex de la nuez

ADDRESS: 414 west broadway NY, NY 10012

This message was sent to:

Senator Jesse Helms

Senator John Edwards

Rep. Sue Myrick

***************************** Copy of message text follows: *****************************

Dear friends,I guess most of you have growned with the Beatles or the Stones,Dylan or whatever.Let me tell you that nowadays those artist would have hardly been heard by the people due to the politic of mayor labels which attitude doesn't allow you to make your choices since they control any single media(I guess you know what it means by your work...).I believe, as a music publisher,songwriter,producer and artist, that the future of a healthy music industry is a democratic system like Napster and I truly believe that instead of beeing a damage for the author's earning it will increase them since it IS creating RIGHT NOW a new generation of REAL MUSIC FANS. tonight,when you go back home and turn on your car's radio or listen at home at those songs that made you so happy,PLEASE remember that music can save your souls,so I beg you: SOS thank you

JESSE HOLMES'S ANSWER

Dear Friend:

Thank you for your very helpful letter about the Napster matter and the copyright issues surrounding it. At the outset let me say that

while I don't approve of much of the music and movies coming out of the entertainment industry these days as these works run counter to mainstream American values and that I'm not a copyright attorney, but

common sense should dictate that any author, musician, playwright, composer, or artist who creates a work of art or authors a book; that work is their property. This has been standard practice even before the enactment of U.S. copyright laws and goes back deep into history before the existence of the United States.

While communications technology has made it possible to copy music off air or down load it to a computer file at home, the fact remains that it is someone's creative property. In the case of Napster, it is a for profit company that provides a service that enables computer users download a artist's work onto a computer file at home. It _ and I'm sure other similar companies make a profit from its operations off other's creative property, without properly compensating the artists.

There is a big difference between making an off the air home recording and a commercial company profiting from the works of others. Look at it this way, if you wrote a book in which you put a great deal of time and effort to write (on which you obtained a copyright) and someone printed a number of copies and sold them without compensating you for your time and energy, would that be fair to you? I think the answer is obviously no. If this started happening to a great many authors there would less incentive to write and the number of fiction and non-fiction books written each year would decline.

Hopefully, the Congress will soon address this issue in the near future by updating our copyright laws as they apply to the Internet so that common sense equity is maintained between producers and consumers.

Again, thank you for writing.

Sincerely,

Jesse Helms

U.S. Senator