While I type this, I’m downloading Gomez’s awesome “Bring It On” album to my hard drive from Napster. Technically, I’m stealing music. Take me away.

Actually, I’m legally within the law. I own Gomez’s disk, but my computer is too slow to encode MP3s. I just bought a portable MP3 jukebox, so instead of taking the songs off of my disk and putting them on the player, I’m downloading them from someone else’s computer, who has chosen to share files that they, supposedly, also own. Am I a criminal? Plenty of people think so. Plenty of you think so. Hell, even I sometimes think so — like when I downloaded, then burned to disk Rage Against the Machine’s “The Battle Of Los Angeles” two months before it came out, then never bought the album because I had heard it enough by the time it was available to consumers.

So should Napster be shut down? The courts seem to think that the file-sharing service is illegal, and last Monday’s decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals may end up being the last remaining hope for Shaun Fanning to continue his half-hour of fame. Record companies popped champagne last Monday, thinking that the days of college students clicking on their Winamp window’s shuffle function were close to over.

Those record companies sure are stupid, aren’t they?

I haven’t heard a single record executive talk about the huge amount of money they’re going to save from the popularity of MP3’s, which — like the popularity of rock ’n’ roll, hip-hop, and slap bracelets — is more than just a passing fad. There hasn’t been any press, for instance, about the way that record labels, bands, and promoters are distributing their music virtually for free now, cutting out the middle men that drove up the cost of disks. Instead of printing up press kits, hiring independent promoters and making phone calls for marketing samples, industry weasels now have the ability to reach the people that care about music — both in the media and consumer population — without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. Using Napster and MP3.com as an alternative to traditional distribution has saved plenty of people within the music community money that they would have gambled on promotional tools.

Although shutting Napster down is the easy out for suits worried about their jobs, all it will do is postpone the inevitable. Record companies putting all their cash into shutting down Napster is like Dubya putting 100 percent of the nation’s war-on-drugs budget into stopping Ecstasy distribution in Ithaca — it’s just throwing money away. Instead of concentrating on shutting Napster down, the record companies should look for alternatives — like BMG’s pay-to-play service or, as Robert X. Cringely proposed in a PBS editorial last week, taking a percentage of the sale of hardware (blank disks, burners, etc.) as royalty payments. The record companies make money, the artists make money, and everyone’s happy.

For now, though, I’m still a criminal. And if you’ve downloaded music — ever — so are you.