Pay-per-view press. (Letters).

Nicholas Thompson's summary of the Napster controversy ("Gofer Broke" November 2001) is ludicrous. The Napster controversy and court cases were not about 19-year-olds or their abstract intellectual process of writing code at all. The trials concerned the degree to which Napster the company leveraged Napster the application to raise venture capital and generate revenue by way of the massive copyright violation of creative original content.

If Thompson seriously feels that all forms of digital content should be available without charge on the Internet, regardless of the time, energy, and money involved in its production and the explicit intentions of its creators, I have a proposition for him: put himself in the same position as creative artists, many of whom are paid not with a salary but on a royalty basis. In other words, abandon his paycheck. At the bottom of each column, he can give readers a notice stating that if they enjoyed his writing, they can contribute to his bank account via PayPal. Do this for a year and publish the results.

WES SIMONDS via email