Ultimately, the best defense against Napster may be a good offense. This may not be as hard as it sounds. For one thing, it's a lot easier and more convenient to walk into a music store and buy a CD than it is to go on the Internet and master the technology of MP3 file exchange. Napster may be relatively easy to use, but the process of finding music on another person's computer, figuring out what it is, downloading the compressed file and turning it into playable music takes more patience than many think it's worth. Even when you've mastered the tricks of trading peer to peer, there are all sorts of hidden pitfalls.
Files can take forever to download.
Servers can crash or go offline before you finish. Files advertised as containing one song may hold another. Worse still, P2P files may harbor a file-eating computer virus. The major record labels are also exploring ways of making the music experience they provide for paying customers deeper and richer. That framework is going to be blown away.