Essay on Music Copyright Infringement

Both Grokster and Napster “distributed free software that allowed computer users to share electronic files through peer-to-peer networks” (Oyez). In the Napster case “The recording association asserts Napster is guilty of contributory copyright infringement” (The Guardian). According to Slate “Grokster is, of course, the sequel to Napster”. Mindsets were very similar in certain aspects. Grokster and Napster both thought they weren’t breaking any laws due to Acts and finding ways to cheat the system. Even though either one won in court, both played a major role in leaving a footprint when it comes to violating copyright laws.

In 1999, Shawn Fanning and his little program called Napster created quite a stir in society. Napster's software allows music listeners to open pieces of their personal hard drives to everyone using Napster, sharing whatever MP3 songs they have already downloaded or stored. At any time, thousands of people are online, sharing hundreds of thousands of songs, many of which are technically illegal to download without the permission of the copyright holders. [1] This led to a lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America, with the rock group Metallica as its frontman. In this case, several issues were brought up, one of which was the right of the creator of the music to control what happens with

According to the text A Gift of Fire, Napster “opened on the Web in 1999 as a service that allowed its users to copy songs in MP3 files from the hard disks of other users” (Baase, 2013, p. 192, Section 4.1.6 Sharing Music: The

Napster provided users of the system with a platform to facilitate the transmission of digital forms of music files, called MP3 files. Napster’s platform primarily facilitates “peer-to-peer” file sharing, which allows users to present MP3 files stored on their personal computer to other users looking to copy the file, search for particular MP3 files, and transfer

The issues that will be slugged out in federal district court in San Francisco sound a little too pop culture to be all that serious. How many music CDs are people buying these days in record stores throughout the nation because of Napster? Is the technology that Napster uses legal? Napster is, of course, the wildly popular file-sharing service whose 20 million users have downloaded some half a billion songs--most copyrighted for free. The technology that Napster has brought to music listeners across the globe has allowed the freedom of obtaining music for free and should not be shut down by the entertainment industry's argument in federal court.

The music recording industry is in trouble. For several years now, sales of new and popular music have steadily declined and show no sign of changing. The record companies are quick to blame the growing popularity of the Internet; music is being traded in a digital form online, often anonymously, with the use of file-sharing programs such as Morpheus, KaZaA, and Imesh, to name a few. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) succeeded in disbanding the pioneer Internet file-sharing program, Napster, but is facing confrontation with similar programs that are escaping American copyright laws. While there is an obvious connection between declining popular music

Many companies followed in Napster's footsteps. “...the idea that songs could be downloaded, stored, and shared through networked computers had clearly caught on” ( Encyclopædia Britannica ). Napster created more opportunities for people to make websites like Napster. A more famous website called Pandora was founded in 2000. They, however, got the rights to play the music. Another famous website called Spotify was founded six years

Napster was the first website with downloadable software with the purpose of trading free music. It started off as a chat room

Starting in the year 1999, a company called Napster opened up a whole new world to the Internet where every song ever made was instantly available to you on your computer for free. It was created by an 18-year-old Northeastern University student named Shawn Fanning. Napster transformed personal computers into servers that shared mp3 files all across the Internet (Mayer, 2008). It became popular very quickly because exchanging mp3 files freely and having any music desired right at your fingertips had never been possible before. However, this program that provided the privilege of having free instant music to download did not last long, it was shut down after just two years by

The music industry has undergone radical changes since the end of the 1990’s, largely a function of the internet and its effects on sales and copyright. Besides placing artists and their music on the world stage, the internet also permitted the downloading of music from free-file- exchange networks. A parallel and equally worrisome, phenomenon is record pirating, a practice made easier by the proliferation of CD burners and access to high speed internet. Unauthorized downloading and pirating circumvent intellectual property laws and result in reduced sales. “In Atlantic Canada, average annual household expenditures on CDs and audio cassettes dropped by 27 percent between 1996 and 2001, from $96.00 to $70.00.”

Napster, a free online file sharing network, allowed peers to share digital files directly with each other by way of connections through its software and system. The no cost peer-to-peer sharing gained popularity, particularly with trendy music. A&M Records took notice of the free digital music downloads and brought suit against Napster for direct, contributory, and vicarious copyright infringements (Washington University School of Law, 2013).

The downside of file sharing brings in more problems such as viruses and hackers to many people's computer systems. With the files being in a person's hard drive, the risk of downloading from another person's computer and acquiring a virus unknowingly is growing greater and greater. More people are able to get into a person's system and complete annihilate a person's hard drive. Even Internet security has become a major issue and identity theft is on the rise. Regulating such sites (including Napster) is important to the consumer. The legal responsibilities of the music companies and the government are far greater than they had expected by ensuring the safety of the communities they serve.

What is Napster? According to SearchCIO, Napster is a controversial application that allows people to share music over the Internet without having to purchase their own copy on CD. Not only that, Napster allowed people to download the music on to their own CD and could be played from their own server and use chatting forums. (Rouse) Napster was created by a college dropout named Shawn Fanning and one of his friends who was only nineteen. He became quickly popular on college campuses. Some colleges were banning Napster due to the high bandwidth demands. (Rouse) By the year of 2000, Napster had already had over 26 million users. Basically, according to The Observer Napster was programmed to go into someone else’s music files and choose the songs they wanted and download them on to their computer, which also known as peer-to peer or file is sharing. (Lamont)

The dawn of the internet brought forth a revolution that, by now, has seeped its way in the the very fibers of almost every human experience. Education has changed. Communication has changed. Entertainment has changed. Business has changed. Entire industries have been built, and destroyed, by the information age. The music industry, in particular, has felt both. With precursors of the Compact Disc (CD) and digital music formats, Shawn Fanning single handedly eviscerated the music industry. Napster, his peer to peer mass file sharing service, is what landed the fatal blow, and the industry has been bleeding out since.

What Napster actually does is provide access to nearly every recording anyone oculd want. Napster has not copied or accumulated any of the recordings available from it; it simply helps people to seek the music that they want. It has music available that may not be available anywhere else, and it offers instant connection. It allows someone to listen to a song and check out the artist before spending eighteen dollars on the CD. It is like a "library," where everyone connected "shares" songs with one another. Artists, such as Metallica, who sued Napster, believed their songs were "being given away and the 'library' as ill-gotten pirate booty."