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Ethical issues faced by napster
Napster legal case study
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Napster was an American company that created a revolutionary platform that allowed for music sharing online. Originally, it was established as a peer-to-peer file sharing service that emphasized the exchange of MP3 formatted soundtracks. Founded in 1999, by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, who rebounded post-Napster to become the first President of Facebook, it operated between June 1999 and July 2001. It was a revolutionary because the network allowed for music to be “set free” – suddenly, an incredible amount of information was made available on the Internet, a relatively new forum that had yet to experience huge waves. Napster was that wave – it democratized the access to information and enabled the common user to listen to millions of songs without having to pay for it. Within a few months of its opening, it had 20 million users – an exponential growth which would attract the attention of large media companies, record labels, and famous bands like Metallica, which would eventually lead to the downfall of Napster.
The approach that was taken by the music industry to take down file sharing service was to attack it from all sides – Napster was hit with several lawsuits from different sectors of the music industry. First to hit was A&M Records. A&M Records was actually not a single record label, but a group of plaintiffs that were all members of the RIAA, the Recording Industry Association of America. Some of these plaintiffs include Sony Music Entertainment, Virgin Records America, Universal Music Group, and Warner Bros. Records. When Napster was issued a preliminary injunction by the District Court, it appealed the decision at the Ninth Circuit. I chose to focus on the District Court case because it was where the arguments were ...
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...audiovisuel, 2003. 84-95. Print.
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The case was settled out of court when Napster agreed to ban some 300,000 users who had allegedly downloaded Meta... ... middle of paper ... ... co.uk/content/archive/12647.html - 4/9/00 Napster Boosts CD sales - survey - http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/12093.html - 4/9/00 Napster Details Copyright Case Defence - http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/11750.html - 2/9/00 US Appeal Court sets Date for Napster Trial - http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/12909.html - 2/9/00 Napster Loses Preliminary Hearing - http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/10729.html - 2/9/00 Napster throws Metallica a Curvevall - http://www.salon.com/tech/log/2000/05/10/napster_metallica/index.html - 31/8/00 Napster to Face Music in Courtroom - http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/review/crh121.htm - 2/9/00
The central message of this text is that increasingly, outdated copyright laws are being manipulated and put to use in a ludicrous manner. This is resulting in the suppression of people’s ability to generate and share their own creative expressions.
Over the past decade the societal view of creative society has greatly changed due to advances in computer technology and the Internet. In 1995, aware of the beginning of this change, two authors wrote articles in Wired Magazine expressing diametrically opposed views on how this technological change would take form, and how it would affect copyright law. In the article "The Emperor's Clothes Still Fit Just Fine" Lance Rose hypothesized that the criminal nature of copyright infringement would prevent it from developing into a socially acceptable practice. Thus, he wrote, we would not need to revise copyright law to prevent copyright infringement. In another article, Entitled "Intellectual Value", Esther Dyson presented a completely different view of the copyright issue. She based many her arguments on the belief that mainstream copyright infringement would proliferate in the following years, causing a radical revision of American ideas and laws towards intellectual property. What has happened since then? Who was right? This paper analyzes the situation then and now, with the knowledge that these trends are still in a state of transformation. As new software and hardware innovations make it easier to create, copy, alter, and disseminate original digital content, this discussion will be come even more critical.
Copyright exists to ensure the owners of intellectual property secure a fair return on their work because existing contract law doesn’t offer enough protection. The legal rule of ‘privity of contract ‘ stipulates that a contract existing between two parties cannot be applied to a third party (Law Reform Commission, 2008), therefore the third party would be able to exploit the works wi...
Before the 1990’s, if people want to listen to music, they just visit a music store and pick up a CD and then put it into a stereo equipment. However, the development of MP3 file format gradually changed the way people listen to music. This format lets everyone download music easily and it can be converted to CD as well. But, there is still a problem: searching MP3 files on the internet is maddening and people seldom can find the music they want. Therefore, the birth of Napster solved this problem, creating a virtual music community in which music fans could use the Web as a “swap meet” for music files. More importantly, Napster is easy to use and it’s free, which expands the range of audience in age. Bandwidth also contributed to Napster’s success. The greater the bandwidth, the faster the file can be transferred. So, Napster really changed the way people listen to music, discover music and interact with music.
Ljung and Wahlforss were not the first people to start a music sharing website, or be successful starting one, but they have proved to build upon past companies in revolutionary ways. SoundCloud was founded in 2007 and became increasingly popular around 2009 (Robedhmed). Ten years earlier in 1999, Napster became one of the first websites to design a peer-to-peer music file-sharing platform, with a...
Once upon a time a website provided free music through peer-to-peer file sharing. This was a new technology for the public for a several reasons. The price of home computers had declines dramatically and many people could now afford one. Because of the affordability, many people who had never used a computer suddenly found themselves enmeshed in the new media. Not only could people do their e-mail, do paperwork, play games and use all the different applications they now could also share their files with others. Of course, they wanted to share one of our most valued pleasures, our love of music. The public was not aware that this type of file sharing was illegal because it was not clear on the website disclaimer. Most people did not understand United States copyright laws or the concept of Fair Use. It was the golden age of the internet and everyone was happy with his or her new toy. In this paper, I will discuss legal implications of peer-to-peer file sharing. The most famous case was the Napster lawsuits. I was interested because I got a cease and desist letter spring 2000. I stopped but I never quite understood what the difference was between file-sharing and recording music off the radio, which I later learned was illegal also. This paper will explore if the current copyright laws provide the protection necessary for intellectual property. If not, does it need to be revised? Can the Fair Use Doctrine and the new technology co-exist in the same world?
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 Case). Napster was, however, “copying and distributing most of the songs they traded without authorization” (A Gift of Fire, Section 4.1.6 Sharing Music: The Napster Case). This unauthorized file sharing resulted in a lawsuit - “eighteen record companies sued for contributory infringement claiming that Napster users were blatantly infringing copyrights by digitally reproducing and distributing music without a license” (Communications Law: Liberties, Restraints and the Modern Media, 2011, p. 359).
The story really begins with Napster and its free software that allowed users to swap music across the Internet for free using peer-to-peer networks. While Shawn Fanning was attending Northeastern University in Boston, he wanted an easier method of finding music than by searching IRC or Lycos. John Fanning of Hull, Massachusetts, who is Shawn's uncle, struck an agreement which gave Shawn 30% control of the company, with the rest going to his uncle. Napster began to build an office and executive team in San Mateo, California, in September of 1999. Napster was the first of the massively popular peer-to-peer file sharing systems, although it was not fully peer-to-peer since it used central servers to maintain lists of connected systems and the files they provideddirectories, effectivelywhile actual transactions were conducted directly between machines. Although there were already media which facilitated the sharing of files across the Internet, such as IRC, Hotline, and USENET, Napster specialized exclusively in music in the form of MP3 files and presented a user-friendly interface. The result was a system whose popularity generated an enormous selection of music to download. Napster became the launching pad for the explosive growth of the MP3 format and the proliferation of unlicensed copyrights.
The evolution of the Internet into a mainstream resource has provided its users with access to whatever their hearts desire, often at no cost. Such free access has instilled in the minds of users that they are entitled to possess all that they may obtain, without regard to those from whom they are taking. Causing the damages to our economy and society on a global scale, and challenges to the current state of copyright law, resulting from the growth and advancement of digital technology, which has created a pandemic of apathy among an entire population of users toward the interests of copyright owners.
The music business is a bellwether for this upheaval, where online networking are progressively utilized for sharing data about music collections and melodies—furthermore for the sharing of the music itself. Customarily, clients found music either through radio play or from their companions, what's more, expended it through collection buys. Presently, clients are progressively finding music through online networking, (for example, music sites and online music benefits) and devouring computerized adaptations of music and collections, regularly made accessible online by different consumers. all these elements are not only changing the behavior of the consumers but are also affecting the music sales overall (Dewan and Ramaprasad 2008, 2012). with these advancements in social media, the music industry has been disrupted and if it is to be traced, it directly leads to the introduction of streaming websites or online disrupting innovations like Napster.
Because of its intangible nature, and particularly the increase of the digital domain and the internet as a whole, computers and cyber piracy make it easier for people to steal many forms of intellectual property. Due to this major threat, intellectual property rights owners’ should take every single measure to protect their rights. Unless these rights are either sold, exchanged, transferred, or appropriately licensed for use in exchange for a monetary fee, they should be protected at all cost. In order to protect these rights, the federal and states governments have passed numerous laws and statutes to protect intellectual property from misappropriation and infringement. “The source of federal copyright and patent law originates with the Copyright and Patent ...
Harwood, E. (May 2004). Staying Afloat in the Internet Stream: How to Keep Web Radio from Drowning in Digital Copyright Royalties, Federal Communications Law Journal, 56(3), 673-697.
However, in recent years, it is not uncommon to see copyright in the possession of a third party other than the creator. These companies make use of copyright as an investment and financial tools to gain profit. In this case, the use of copyright loses its original purpose of protecting the creator, but used as a mean for financial gain. This could possibly hinder creativity as innovation becomes a financial tool catered to the tastes of the general public, while the less marketable new ideas goes unnoticed by the general public under the copyright laws. It is crucial to note that online platforms such as blogs, Facebook and Youtube, and people making their music/works available online for free shows the rapid surge in the number of people willing to sacrifice their copyrights to market themselves to the world. In this highly saturated market, copyright laws can become less relevant as marketing and business is placed on higher
As the Internet became more prevalent, the need of copyright protection has become a necessity. Today, copyright protection has