The Battle over Napster Rages On

Napster Inc. now has more than 20 million users (''Inside Napster,'' Cover Story, Aug. 14). Patrons have repeatedly stated their willingness to pay for the service they're getting. Twenty million people, each of them paying $10 per month, is $200 million per month, $2.4 billion per year. Doesn't anybody want this money? Is this what ''post-capitalism'' looks like? People take something for nothing because the owners refuse to sell it to them!

David L. Hagan
Pismo Beach, Calif.

In your formula to combat Napster you missed one very important point: Napster & Co. is screaming that the music industry's pricing model is way out of line with customer expectations. When you can buy a two-hour color digital sound movie that cost $50 million to make for $12, why are music CDs still $17.98? Sony Corp. is pathetic to think that customers will pay $2.49 for a downloaded single.

The music industry needs not only to rethink its methods of distribution but also its pricing model. If the customer thinks that a much-wanted product is greatly overpriced they will either find another way to get it or get a reasonable substitute. That is Marketing 101.

In this day of higher quality for lower prices, maybe an artist needs more than one big hit to become a millionaire, and maybe the music companies need to look at their bloated cost structures. Trying to sell an overpriced product is a loser's game.

Jim Lewis
Wilmington, Del.

Stop using euphemisms like ''sharing.'' Shawn Fanning and his Napster cohorts are nothing but thieves and most definitely are in it for the money they can make by enabling copyright infringements.

Joel Amkraut
Los Angeles

The attractive thing about Napster and digital music in general is the ability to pick and choose what you want to hear and customize it for yourself. I have bought many CDs containing 12-plus songs, when I really only wanted two. Now I am in control, and I like it. (I would definitely pay for a service like that!)

I truly believe that if, instead of fighting with Napster, musicians embraced the concept and figured out how everyone can make a fair profit from it, it would be a win-win situation for everyone.

As you concluded in your article, the emotional response to Napster can't be stopped. The companies who figure out how to capitalize on that emotion will be the real winners down the road.

Kelly Wagner
Bethlehem, Pa.

Why Do Some Investors Get Special Treatment?

In ''How Lucent lost its luster'' (News: Analysis & Commentary, Aug. 7), it was reported that the chief executive of Lucent Technologies Inc. held a conference call with ''investors'' to explain the company's lack of recent earnings. As a stockholder, why did I not get in on the conference call?

Sometimes similar calls are reported to have been held with ''analysts.'' How does one get that title--since most of us try to analyze? What I'm really asking is why do some people get inside information in time to take action to prevent losses or to make gains, whereas most of us hear the bad or good news too late?

Ingvar Eliasson
New York

The Rich Are a Minority That Deserves Protection, Too

Bashing the rich on the campaign trail may win votes for an aggressive politician--as long as it is confined to just rhetoric (''Death knell for death taxes,'' Economic Trends, July 31). But actually to punish this minority as a matter of official policy with an unfair tax is un-American.

I do not believe the men who rushed ashore at Normandy and Inchon were fighting to defend such a corrupt system. Rather, they fought to preserve the constitutional assurance that the rights of minorities would be protected. They also fought for the opportunity to make a better life for themselves and their children.

Bob Keir
Avalon, Pa.

Social Security Isn't an Entitlement

In general I am in agreement with your thoughts in ''Trim the debt first'' (Editorials, Aug. 7), except to your reference to Social Security as an entitlement. Why is Social Security considered an entitlement when we and the companies that we worked for have paid dearly over the years on what was to be an insurance policy imposed by the U.S. government upon its citizenry?

Now, after some 65-plus years they are realizing that they have short-changed the public, and now they want to privatize it partially, so that the younger generation will have a better income in old age.

As for your comment ''What about the young?'': The young should learn to save and invest like the older generation.

Zaven S. Touloukian
Camden, S.C.

How to Create a Nation of Multizillionaires

In ''The Politics of Prosperity'' (Cover Story, Aug. 7), you give George W. Bush credit for a plan to ''overhaul Social Security by boosting investment returns''--referring to his proposal to let individuals ''invest'' in the stock market.

On that score, your story also reports that federal tax receipts will be $2 trillion this year. So I propose that we ''invest'' all federal revenues in stocks, selling off enough to pay bills at the end of each month. The Dow Jones industrial average would soon top 1 million, and that would just be the beginning. Soon, everyone would be a multizillionaire. We could buy all goods abroad and import immigrants to perform our services. No citizen would ever have to hit a lick at anything bigger than a golf ball. Then repeal the estate tax, and the fortunes would multiply with each generation.

Utopia would finally be here, and we deserve every drop of it. When we all get to economic heaven, our national hymn would be How Great Dow Art.

Mack A. Moore
Professor of Economics
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta

Look at the Math When Evaluating Eco-Cars

Sometimes things are not as ''green'' as they appear. ''The eco-cars'' (Special Report, Aug. 14) does a fine job of applauding the more practical and environmentally sensitive vehicles Toyota Motor and Honda Motor have brought to market, but it fails the grade when it comes to performing the math. So the two-person Honda Insight will produce a mere 25 tons of carbon dioxide in its life compared with the nine-person Excursion, which will produce 134 tons. But if a larger vehicle is driven with most seats occupied, the difference in pollutants [per capita] becomes quite small.

A similar argument can be made about fuel savings. The correct formula has to be how many people are transported x miles for y gallons of fuel. (The same method we use for commercial airlines.)

If a sports utility vehicle can carry 10 passengers 10 miles on one gallon of fuel, that would be equal to a car carrying two passengers 50 miles on one gallon. Of course, this assumes the SUV is being driven with more than a sole occupant. With the largest SUVs it is probably a good assumption that they are used by companies and individuals needing such interior space on a routine basis.

Professor J. Scott Mathews
American Graduate School of
International Management
Glendale, Ariz.

As traffic continues to worsen, eco-cars will become more worthwhile. We are spending more time gridlocked and idling (0 miles per gallon). The fact that eco-cars essentially shut down at each stop will save lots of gasoline.

The Environmental Protection Agency should institute a new measure of efficiency: gallons per minute at idle. This might dampen SUV sales.

Steve Baker
Portland, Ore.

I take exception to the assertion of your reporters that contemporary electric cars are ''high maintenance.'' Almost three years into leasing a Honda EV+, my car requires about as much maintenance as my cell phone: I charge it; I drive it. And at an energy cost of 2 cents a mile for the EV+, I'm glad I don't own a gas-burner anymore.

Dan Wardlow
San Francisco

Hubris Can Be a Lightning Rod

As for the possibility that John W. Meriwether and his club of ''geniuses'' at Long-Term Capital Management could lose billions of their clients' money a second time, current investors might like to believe that lightning does not strike the same tree twice (''Hedge-fund disaster? What hedge fund disaster?'' Finance, Aug 14).

I rather believe that Meriwether's tower of hubris will continue to attract lightning.

William John Mikus
President & CEO
Mikus Capital Management Inc.
Beverly Hills, Calif.

The Real Numbers at Dick Davis

At the end of ''Newsletters discover the New Economy'' (Finance, July 10), you presented a circulation chart showing the circulation of Dick Davis Digest in 1995 at 26,000 and our current circulation at 5,000, thus establishing an 80% decline.

This is a completely false statement. Dick Davis Digest is currently delivering over 30,000 monthly subscribers (an increase of approximately 15% over your 26,000 circulation number for 1995). Your source for Dick Davis circulation numbers came from Creative Direct Marketing Group. This is a company that Dick Davis Digest has never had a business relationship with. How they could produce any circulation number regarding Dick Davis Digest is a mystery to me. In fact, no one from Creative Direct Marketing Group has ever called any employee of Dick Davis Digest to verify circulation numbers.

Don Hanrahan
Chairman
Dick Davis Publishing
Fort Lauderdale

Editor's note: Craig Huey, president of Creative Direct Marketing, stands by his numbers. He responds that because newsletter companies are mostly private, publishers don't release circulation or other financial figures. To arrive at his circulation estimates, Huey says he relied on a number of credible resources, including newsletter publishing directories, measurements of direct and bulk mailings through the U.S. Postal Service, and professional contacts in the industry.

The table accompanying ''Anyone can be a venture capitalist'' (BW Investor, Aug. 14, 2000)

In the table accompanying ''Anyone can be a venture capitalist'' (BW Investor, Aug. 14), the three-year total return for American Capital Strategies was incorrectly reported as 59.3%. The correct number is 96.5%.

An Up Front List regarding Web site ad revenues (July 17, 2000)

An Up Front List regarding Web site ad revenues, in the July 17 issue, left off the data source. It should have said AdZone Interactive.