"We'll never stop, we'll never quit/'Cause you're Metallica!"

That's the war cry of fan camaraderie Metallica's James Hetfield conjures up when the band performs their anthem "Whiplash." In 18 years Metallica has risen from an obscure underground band to one of rock's most perennially successful groups.

Today, "indie" doesn't mean much of anything; back then, it did. In the early 1980s, before Metallica even recorded their debut album, the band had established a worldwide following via an underground tape-trading network. In modern parlance, we would call it illegal and unrestricted copying and distribution of their songs; the recent announcement of Metallica's lawsuit against Napster and various colleges on the grounds of copyright infringement by users of Napster's software struck me as stunningly ironic in light of the band's history.

Come with me back to the Stone Age times of the early '80s, a time when VCRs were the size of small cars and we learned about computers in movies like "WarGames" and "Tron." There was a thriving heavy-metal underground at this time. Mainstream metal was dominated by hair bands like Mvtley Cr|e, Bon Jovi and Poison. As with other underground scenes, this underground was born out of hatred for the mainstream of the day. The unwashed image of Motvrhead was the aesthetic of this scene, not the spandex and hairspray of Mvtley Cr|e.

A big part of this scene was tape trading. Tape traders networked via the pen-pals section in English hard-rock magazines like Kerrang! and the now-defunct Sounds. There were few independent record labels at that time catering to the metal crowd; we traded demos and live tapes by dozens of bands who didn't have a record out. The metal underground was just as legitimate as any punk scene, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area. Some of the bands eventually had limited success; a few are still stumbling along (shout-outs go to Anthrax, Megadeth and Slayer), but most of these bands never put out more than an album or a single, and the majority are now long forgotten (special shout-outs go to Jaguar, Blitzkrieg, Control and Anvil Chorus).

Back in the Stone Age, tape trades took weeks to complete as letters and packages were sent and received. Communication at that time was done by means of a now-ancient art that required the participant to be familiar with the technology of envelopes and postage. Bands would get famous without even having played a show or releasing a record, but simply on the strength of their tape getting distributed to tape traders around the world.

In 1982, an upstart band called Metallica provided a few tape-trading friends with a demo tape of seven songs, called "No Life 'Til Leather." Dubbed and re-dubbed and re-re-dubbed, the tape made its way from California to Chicago, to New York, to England, to Holland, to Germany. Within months, the band had fans worldwide -- without the benefit of a publicist, an A&R person or a marketing budget. It's anybody's guess how many people were actually involved in this tape-trading network, but a good number of these charter Metallica fans were budding rock journalists who wrote for the various underground metal zines and magazines of the time (added shout-outs go to Metal Mania, Whiplash, Aardschok, and Metal Forces); their enthusiasm for this unknown California band was very soon transmitted to thousands of their readers.

The rest, as they say, is history. "Kill 'Em All" was a sensation; "Master of Puppets" ended up in the Top 40 album chart; a few years later, "Metallica" would sell 12 million copies.

Despite its huge success, Metallica has tended to respect its roots. The band members realized the valuable role concert bootlegs played in building their loyal and enduring fan base. As recently as 1996, the band allowed fans to tape concerts from special taping sections ` la the Grateful Dead's. In a 1997 Musician cover story on the commercial bootleg industry, band co-manager Peter Mensch said that by allowing fans to tape their shows, Metallica effectively killed the demand for commercial bootlegs; fans were allowed access for free what they would otherwise buy.

Of course, concert bootlegs are different from pirated versions of songs lifted directly from officially released albums and singles. Pirated versions of officially released material cuts directly into money, and it's not called the "music business" for nothing.

Fast forward to April 13, 2000, and the announcement that Metallica and their representatives had filed a lawsuit against the software company Napster and the University of Southern California, Yale and Indiana University.

Napster is a program that lets people swap music files (relatively) quickly and easily. The company says, in effect, that its software helps new bands distribute their music and that it's not the company's fault that users are abusing the technology to distribute copyrighted songs. Metallica argues that the program steals their intellectual property. They also contend that the universities are a partner in this because college students using the schools' networks seem to be the biggest users of Napster's software. And now the band has begun tracking down individual users who are allowing Metallica songs be downloaded by others.

Personally, I'm torn. The Internet allows such rapid dissemination of information that it potentially can be an incredible way to distribute music. When I think back about how it used to take weeks to receive a cassette of new songs by a band through the mail, it's astounding that the same task now takes only minutes or even seconds.

On the other hand, since I happen to work as the copyright and licensing person for a major book publisher, I completely understand Metallica's position. The songs do belong to them. They worked hard to create them and registered them for copyright protection.

But Napster isn't doing the actual pirating of the songs; it's the users who are the culprits. Can the company and universities really be held accountable? Should Xerox machines be held accountable for the magazine articles and book chapters illegally copied on them? Should Kinko's? I dunno.

In the end, success is a double-edged sword. Twenty years ago, we swapped music. Today, the same thing is referred to with words like "commodity" and "goods" -- both part of the wording in Metallica's press release concerning the lawsuit. After 50 million-plus albums, the band's music is a commodity now.

The tape-trading days of the early '80s were very innocent. It was all for the love of the commodity -- er, music. To their credit, Metallica are one of the few to claw their way out of that metal underground scene; it's also to their credit that they're still going strong. Still, the fact that they're attempting to crush something that would allow a young upstart band the same kind of underground exposure once afforded them is ironic.

Beyond the legal issues, I think the Internet has also taken some of the mystery and excitement out of discovering new music. Yes, it's definitely making it more convenient, but with convenience can come apathy. There's something compelling about taking the time and making the effort to dub a cassette. (Adjust those levels! Do you want Dolby with that?) You put it into an envelope, throw it into the nearest mailbox and have it delivered to a far-off destination. Once there, another music lover opens the package, pops it into a tape deck and the magic of sharing happens. Yes, the Internet is about sharing information, but downloading a file onto your hard drive and opening the file in Real Audio just isn't as exciting to me.

Press eject and give me the tape.