Online Music Sharing
Will cds and cassettes soon become extinct like the 8 track and vinyl records? Well, that very well may become the case due to online music sharing. Music sharing has become the hottest, most popular thing now-a-days for teens and college students across the nation. This innovative idea is now caught in between a war of advocates and anti-advocates, courts have now become involved, which side are you on?
I don’t know about you but I’m all for the online music sharing. I’m for it simply because I am one who doesn’t have a lot of time to go review and listen to cd’s to hear their potential. I am a very busy person, and I am always on the run so I don’t have the time to go to the record store and buy whole cd’s or the singles which is one of the pros of online music sharing.
Online sharing is an excellent way to preview music before one would decide to buy it because if there aren’t any songs that aren’t liked by the listener then they would decide to buy the single and not waste money buying a whole album of an artist that they wouldn’t like. But that factor is frowned upon by the music industry. Why? One may ask. Because of online music sharing services such as Napster.
Napster was started by accident by a college student trying to find a faster way to load and copy songs off of the internet. He some way found out how to load songs really fast. After finding out this information he put it on the internet so that other college students like himself who wanted to sample music could find it faster and easier just like he did.
The Napster website is simply a free way of obtaining the songs wanted and to make mixed cd’s for themselves and others. There are other sites (i.e. Morpheus, Aimster, Audio Galaxy) that offer their free music and sites to listen to any song of their choice. “Currently the post-Napster tool of choice is Aimster. The name Aimster was cobbled from America Online Instant Messenger and Napster. Developed by John Deep of Troy, New York, Aimster software allows AIM users to offer other AIM users a way to locate and copy files on one another’s computers. Unlike Napster, AIM users are on one another’s buddy lists. The index of files exists on each AIM user’s personal computer. When one AIM user wants to c...
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...er.” (Internet Magazine 1). It’s their fault and they should have to live with the mistakes they made. Don’t go blaming the innocent people that have found a new way to get around their system before they did and now they’re upset. They’ve had control for years, they control the prices of the cds (many of which are just plain ridiculous), how many quantities are produced, what will be soon out of print, and so many other things.
It’s about time that we the people took control of a small aspect of it and since we developed it, we should be allowed to use it and not be punished for it. And the online music sharing companies should go unpunished as well. Did they really do anything wrong? They’re honestly giving the people what they want, none of those artists are truly losing a great heap of money, they’re just money hungry and want more of it. Well, we’re not rich, we’re regular Joe’s and we buy, get, and take what we can afford and free…everyone can afford.
Works Cited
Arnold, Steve. “Peer-to-Peer Computing and Contents Control.” Oct. 2001. pg.1
“Bad News for Online Music.” Internet Magazine. 24 Sep. 2001: pg. 1
Park, Lark. “Keeping the Napster Faith.” 16 Oct. 2000: pg.1
Napster is a virtual community, which consists of music news and chat-rooms, the main feature it offers is an easy way to download MP3's (music files). This controversial service has brought the lawsuit to Napster. Napster allows its subscribers to download the music files without charge. It is not however, from Napster that the subscribers get these files. It is from each other. The users share their hard drives so that other users can download any of their music files that they want.
About 5 years ago Napster, a network software application, was being used to download music files. The network was growing faster than anybody who ever started it would have imagined. When artists, songwriters, and all of the other people involved in making CD's realized that this wasn't going to slow down any time soon, they decided that they needed to stop Napster. Little by little, Napster was being less used and it became harder to find the songs wanted until nobody used it anymore. When all of this was happening, other applications were made available. Kazaa and Grokster are probably the two most used Peer to Peer, or P2P file sharing networks you can find, although there are many others.
So why are people like Metallica and Dr. Dre so angry with Napster? One reason, unrelated to record sales, is that Napster offers unperfected versions of unreleased songs that these artists do not want released until they are completed.
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.
...'t become free." Of all industries that have been revolutionized by modern technology, few have been hit as hard as the music industry. This digital era has unfortunately for music producers, made it easier than ever for consumers to get music access without paying for it. Stealing music, let alone anything in existence, is strictly against the law. Despite the legal offense of the matter, stealing music over the internet betrays the recording artists who create it. Inescapably, stealing music threatens the occupation of the thousands of working people who contributed to producing the music. In all, this sweeping music thievery is detrimental to the entire music community, and to those downloading illegally. There is a great deal of uncertainty about how copyright laws should function in the digital world, but the laws themselves are clear. So please, enjoy the music.
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.
Music sharing websites and file sharing saw a debut for the first time in the music industry,instantaneously bringing down the industry's revenue for hiring new talent and artists wages overall. The music industry though experienced
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.
And if so, is it beneficial to artists? Or does the industry’s failure put a strain on artists trying to make a living? The future of the music industry relies on the nature of its relationship with the internet: cooperative or competitive. Despite the recording industry’s strong presence throughout the 20th century, it has seriously taken a beating since the emergence of the internet.
The first online peer to peer file-sharing application was Napster. Napster allowed people to copy music from their CDs onto their computers in mp3 format. They then allowed other members of Napster to download these songs onto their computers. Once this caught on, millions of people were downloading thousands of songs a day. And as you can imagine, this did not make the record companies happy with the idea that people were getting their music for free instead of buying the CD. It also caused a problem with some of the recording artists. Most notably Metallica.
...uld emphasize the negative aspects of downloading music for free, research shows that the benefits will greatly conquer the drawbacks. By letting people download music for free, the artist will have a better chance to have his music out faster and have his music gain popularity quicker. The local bands can be heard by having free songs. Also, you’ll have your favorite song in the palm of your and. Now it’s up to the record labels and artist to not be greedy and let the music be free.
Production companies took a bold step forward by uploading their content online. People now are not obliged to buy a full album to listen to one song, for a minimal fee you can buy the track you want, the same goes for movies and electronic publications. The downloaded files though will be digitally protected so that only the person who downloads them can use them, and he can’t share them at home or with friends. Even with this step from production companies, a large portion of people who download music still do it for free. Moreover hackers came up with new ways to remove the digital copyrights so the same as before one downloads music and distributes them around.
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.
Now let’s flash forward back to present day when all that doesn’t happen anymore. Instead of saving of our money and begging our parents to take us to the store to buy a newly released album, we simply get on our computer, go to a website and download the album for free. It doesn’t matter what website it is, whether it is Limewire, Frostwire, or Pirate Bay, people will be happy with their free album. There are still some kids to this day who enjoy going to the store and buying and listening to an album the old-fashioned way but we have to wonder how bad things will get as more and more people are getting equipped with the Internet and the use of downloading music. While the internet might be making life easier for all, the growing use of downloading music on the Internet is growing into a detrimental and illegal problem.