But I hit a wall when I logged on to Napster. It turned out the downloadable program you need to connect to the thousands of other music bandits on Napster isn't compatible with Macintosh computers. I own a Mac. For that you need an application called Macster. And Macster simply wasn't happening for me. Day after day I tried to register with Macster, and each time I'd finally get the application up, it would tell me that my password was not working. I logged on as five different people with five passwords before I realized the problem was apparently with Macster and not me. This may explain how Napster/Macster can claim 20 million users.

I could, however, enjoy all the Hole I wanted. But Courtney Love, despite all her emotional range (fake righteous anger, fake depressed anger, fake redemptive anger) got tiresome after a while, and I longed for the somewhat less fake anger of Tupac Shakur. Rather than puzzle out how to make Macster work, I grabbed a couple of Tupac MP3s from a friend at work and brought them home on a Zip disc.

I was about to copy the Tupac tunes to my computer when I had another cream-cheese attack. Wasn't this theft, only without the tedious, techie part? Was I about to do something terribly, horribly wrong? If there was one man who could put a wayward young fellow on the right path, a sage who could tell me definitively whether I was having some harmless fun or starting that long, crooked walk to the hoosegow, it was the moral arbiter of our age, Judge Joseph Wapner.

"I don't think getting something for nothing is right," he said simply, making my heart feel all black and crispy.

I asked Judge Wapner what kind of punishment he would suggest for someone who stole maybe a Tupac Shakur song or two. "It sounds to me like a white-collar crime. If it were a first offense, I'd be very lenient. I'd put the person on probation and levy a small fine, $500 or $1,000." When I pressed him for the little moral lecture he'd give at the end of the trial in the Case of the Shakur Shakedown, he said, "I would indicate that this is obviously improper, immoral and unethical and something that should not be countenanced, and be sure you don't ever do this again, buddy." I wondered what he would say to Shakur if he heard his lyrics.

I laid off the Internet music for a while so I could reconsider. But then I thought, with all due respect to Wapner, that it would be perfectly legal to download a few tunes while Napster's appeal works its way up to the Supreme Court. The more I read about the case, the more I didn't feel bad, possibly because the main voice for the immorality of stealing music is Metallica, a band with a hit album called Kill 'Em All.

I began to convince myself that it was no different from listening to music free on the radio or making a mix tape. As long as I wasn't making money by selling these tapes or rebroadcasting them, it was legal, according to my reading of the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act. It's not illegal to take a book out of the library even though the author isn't getting paid when I read it. Besides, a Jupiter poll says Napster users are 45% more likely to buy more music than non-Napster users. The real theft is taking place when people sell discs online that they have made of bootlegged songs, not when someone listens for his own enjoyment.