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Nearly two decades ago, a little-known heavy metal band desperate for some attention from the big boys cut a demo tape and rather cannily, gave it away to thousands of black T-shirt wearing metal heads. The band was tight, and the buzz grew quickly. And the band members told their fans to make as many copies as possible, to increase distribution by viral marketing. It wasn't long before shows sold out and the record companies came calling.

That band was, of course, Metallica, today's poster child for the anti-MP3 movement, and a group of artists who should seriously think of changing the name on the drum kit to "Hypocrisy." Consider the statement of Lars Ulrich, Metallica's drummer and living proof of the Elvis Syndrome; when you get too far from the fans big fella, the end is near. Ulrich told an audience at ArtistDirect.com that the United States Congress should intervene in the MP3 dispute "before this whole Internet thing runs amok."

Guess what, Lars? It's already run amok. Napster is just a tool for a movement based in the depths of human behavior. We share information, and sometimes we pay for it. If you're around my age, you spent a good deal of time as a teenager making and trading cassette tapes filled with music, bootlegged and otherwise, that you couldn't afford to buy. Did that behavior injure either the artists or the record industry? On the contrary, it helped it. When I had tried a copied version of Horses by Patti Smith or one of the two New York Dolls albums first, and fell in love with the music, I bought legitimate copies. I bought into their musical brands big-time, and went through whole catalogues with my savings.

When Metallica's lawyers collect the names of more than 300,000 fans who've traded MP3 copies of the band's songs on Napster, the artists themselves show how out of touch they are with both technology and their own fans. Where they once believed that a thriving community of fans trading their music would lead to sales, they now believe that they're losing record sales because of Napster.

Legally, of course, their action is a like hitting a softball pitch. They own the rights to their own music and should be paid for it. No one disputes this, including the people at Napster. As a writer, I believe that artists should be paid for their work. But I also understand first-hand the economic power of the Net. To put in bluntly, atNewYork.com grew from its early days because of the distribution of unauthorized copies. And you know what? Those copies eventually turned into subscribers, happy to get a mixture of content and advertising.

Metallica is missing the point -- they're angry that there are 300,000 fans trading their music via Napster. Fools! They should be thrilled. What's the cost of that free marketing to the band and their label? That's right, nothing. How many concert tickets, T-shirts, and yes, albums will that activity -- if allowed -- eventually sell?

Furthermore, the band clearly has no clear estimation of just how far out of the barn the Internet music horse is. Instead of trying to put the close the barn door, Metallica and other artists should be looking for creative ways to create revenue from the Napsters and the MP3.com's and their likely successors. Clearly, this involves marketing deals and e-commerce, taking advantage of very inexpensive traffic of highly-motivated consumers. I like very much the suggestion of rapper Chuck D., who argues that Napster and the like should be considered the modern-day equivalent of radio, and that perhaps artists and labels should share in advertising and e-commerce revenues derived from this rich stream of users.

In the 1950s, another group concerned with the flow of music among young people appealed to Congress to put the cork back in the bottle before it was too late. Do you know what they wanted to ban? Oh yeah, rock and roll.