Napster
In 1998 a university dropout, Shawn Fenning, nicknamed napster, spent days without sleep in his uncle's office producing a new music-swapping programme now known as napster. Napster is an MP3 file sharing programme that lets you connect to millions of other users world-wide and swap music with them for ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, even Napster itself as a programme is FREE and is available to ANYONE with a PC and the Internet.
Napster spreads all types of music ranging from unknown and up and coming bands to famous names like Craig David and Artful Dodger this is all at absolutely NO COST. So as you can imagine as Napster grew more popular than ever its total users topped 50MILLION in November 2000.
Nearly 75 percent of college students have downloaded music from the Net, according to a recent study by Greenfield Online, an international research firm. Nearly two-thirds of the 1,135 college students surveyed say they download music as a way to sample music before buying it. So does this prove that the artists are actually benefiting out of Napster as people will hear there songs and possibly go and buy there singles. Many people believe music labels should have been donating money to Napster users, not threatening to sue them. And so the much-libelled Napster users are dedicated music buyers, quick to reach for their wallets. Greenfield research says it found that 45 per cent of online music fans are more likely to have increased their music purchases than online fans who don't use Napster. The study of Napster users found that 71 percent of users say they're willing to pay to download an entire album.
A maker of MP3 portable players said "The year 2000 is a fantastic year for digital music,we had this earthquake called Napster who's aftershocks are still happening". Napster gives publicity to unsigned groups and gives people a chance to listen to their music and so possibly they may get a record deal form the record companies.
But in the shops people are paying £3.99 for these singles and to some they simply can't afford it, so why not use Napster and get it fo nothing???
After all would you pay for something you could get for free?
Using napster gives everyone a chance to get all their favourite music for nothing, all new bands singles are featured on the programme but not forgetting many, many old songs for the older users of the site.
The RIAA believe that Napster has helped users infringe copyright. The threat of the lawsuit has been around since the conception of Napster and was actually filed four months after Napster went on line. The case is not as clear-cut as it first appears. RIAA argues that most of the MP3's on Napster's site are mainly pirated. Therefore, by Napster allowing and actually making it easier for users to download MP3's this means that they are assisting Copyright infringement.
Simply put; All things are good until man makes it otherwise. And by using Burke's "lens" we can look at the internet use of Napster and see how different people have found different views of it and how now some people deem Napster as bad or in a negative lens they see Napster. The Napster software, launched early in 1999, allows internet users to share and download MP3 files directly from any computer connected to the Napster network. The software is used by downloading a client program from the Napster site and then connecting to the network through this software, which allows sharing of MP3 files between all users connected to the network.
A popular program easily accessible on the Internet is called Napster. After you download it from Napster’s site, you basically tell it where you keep your Mp3 files and when it connects it cross-references everyone’s files and lets you search through them all and download as you please. 90% of the files that are traded daily are illegally “ripped” from CDs. Napster has a blurb at startup that states “Copying or distributing unauthorized Mp3 files may violate United States and/or foreign copyright laws. Compliance with copyright law remains your responsibility.” The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is charging the site with copyright infringement and alleges that Napster has created a base for music piracy on an unprecedented scale. Napster contends that they provide the platform, not the actions, and that as the blurb states it’s up to the people. Napster is not at fault because the RIAA has overstepped their boundaries and infringed on first amendment rights online.
CD sales are up 16% across the nation. How can Napster be a bad thing if it is helping the
While many suggest that music piracy is destroying the music industry, others claim that it is actually helping. On average, people who pirate music “legitimately purchase 30 percent more music than non-P2P (Peer to peer) users.” This is what Betsy Issacson claims (Issacson). Most of this music is copied from friends and families that bought it from a music store. In 18-29 year olds, this is where they get about 30% of their music from.
Most recently the Supreme Court had to decide whether it was fair or not for music fans to download their favorite songs free of any royalties to the artists. The program, design by two college students, is named Napster and its designed to allow the sharing of mp3 music files over the Internet. Currently, the program is still available and operating with much support from its users.
Richard Simmons, the lead singer of the rock band KISS, has been cited (should “as” be here? Not sure.) speaking out in a distasteful and informal manner against illegal file sharing with the following quote: “It’s only their (you should define who “they” are before this. Seems a little out of context. It seems like you are still addressing file sharing, which is what you introduce the quote as being about, but in reality, he is addressing the people who allow it, whoever they may be) fault for letting foxes get into the henhouse and then wondering why there’s no eggs or chickens. Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid’s face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning”(Source). In his statement, Richard encapsulates the indignation many musicians feel towards people who steal music through file sharing (also known as music piracy). This anger is warranted by the morally accepted viewpoint that stealing is unethical. Music piracy is not measly pilfering, either. “As a consequence of global and U.S.-based piracy of sound recordings, the U.S. economy loses $12.5 billion in total output annually”(Source). However, what if the unhappiness that Richard and other artists feel from illegal file sharing also caused millions of people to be happy? Would the wrongs (that) stealing music caused be morally justified by the prodigious quantity of pleasure generated by music piracy? This is a question similar to one that the founder of a philosophy known as utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham, asked himself. Through the question, Bentham concluded that “[t]he highest principle of morality is to maximize happiness, the overall balance of...
In Greek mythology Pandora was the first woman, bestowed upon humankind by Zeus as a punishment for Prometheus' theft of fire. Entrusted with a box containing all the ills that could plague people, she opened it out of curiosity and thereby released all the evils of human life; wife of Epimetheus. Zeus ordered Hephaestus to make a mixture of earth and water and from it to create a woman as beautiful as a goddess. When she was ready, Athena adorned her and taught her how to weave, while Aphrodite endowed her with grace and passion, the Graces and Peitho garlanded her with gold ribbons and the Hours decorated her with spring flowers. Hermes, on the other hand, put malicious and lying words into her heart. Zeus called her Pandora, because she had received gifts (dora) from
In this case, there are three main effects of Napster on the recording industry. The first one is that it caused a large decline in record sales in a short time. According to this case, the spending on recorded music in U.S dropped 4.1% in 2001 and the industry’s top 10 albums also sold much less compared to the year before. The second effect is that it cased the sales of CD burners, blank CDs and digital audio players increase and nowadays, most new computers come with CD-RW drives installed, which means people can easily store downloaded music, share music with friends and take it with them anytime as well. The third effect is that it increased the cost of recorded music. Once people can download free music through peer-to-peer software services, they have less incentive to buy original editions, which will make recording industry spend more to fight against copyrights and invest more in new artists and new music. Overall, these three effects make the recording industry go through a hard time.
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.
Music plays an important role in our life, and many of us can’t even live without music. With the evolution of music and the impact of digital on the music industry, more and more people pay and download digital music instead of getting CDs. With this evolution, online music streaming become more and more popular than before, it allows you to have the access to all the music online, and you don’t even need to pay for it. Spotify is one of the biggest and most popular online music streaming services, in this paper, I will talk about the background of Spotify, the marketing of it, the prognosis for the growth, and the competitors of it.
First off, music is very expensive and a lot of people do not have the resources to pay for every download. Artists are worth billions of dollars, so losing a few extra dollars because of someone downloading a song instead of buying it will not break them. Artists make money regardless of whether or not people buy C.Ds. People download music because it is
Napster is a company that developed the so-called peer-to-peer technology that lets people search and retrieve music files directly from one another's personal computers. When Napster first came out, millions of internet users worldwide were illegally downloading and distributing copyrighted music, videos, images, and software for free. After being vilified by the entertainment industry, which claims that Napster and any similar programs could make piracy of almost any digital work unstoppable, and many court battles, Napster was ordered by court to be shutdown in 2000. The technology has been praised as a revolutionary development for the Internet—unaware of the problems that would arise from such practices. However, the termination of Napster was not enough, months later, dozens of new, like programs were being developed and used. And since Napster, not much has been done to stop these latest downloading programs.
The music industry was turned upside down with the coming of Napster. Why this was is not really understood, because many programs that were out previously that did the same thing. Scour was a one of a kind program, and before that simple FTP sites were in abundance, as they still are, to download music. Perhaps the ease of which Napster allowed users to share information is what bothered them. But a lawsuit was taken against Napster, and it had to restrict many of its features (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1000463.stm). But if they had simply come to a common middle ground, perhaps having users pay to use the service or pay for the music itself, would have been better. Just because Napster was forced to add program lines that all but shut the program down didn’t mean the other user to user programs were forced to stop being made. In fact when one is shut down it seems like 5 replace it. Because of this many programs that have a service fee or a membership of some sort is ignored.