Got Metallica? Think Again - Company Business and Marketing

Industry Standard, The, Sept 11, 2000 by Marc Speigler

Giant record labels and millionaire rock bands aren't the only anti-Napster activists. In Westchester County, N.Y., folk singer Stefanie Fix, her husband, Michael, and his brother John are waging a war of subversion against the file-sharing system. To protest Napster's mockery of copyrights, the Fixs this summer have been seeding Napster with bogus songs, labeling random sounds (cuckoo clocks, crowd noises, even Stefanie's songs) with familiar names [see list below].

Some files have such silly titles -- "Hanging at the Quikee Mart" by Elvis Presley, for example -- that they don't spread far. But John Fix says Napster users pull about a thousand bogus songs off his servers every night.

Their latest "hit" is "Just Ask," which they attribute to Sting, Pearl jam, Metallica and others. The actual singer is anonymous, but the title isn't, says John: "It comes from looking across [the street] at our True Value hardware store and seeing the 'just Ask' equipment-rental area."