Napster and Intellectual Property :: essays research papers fc

The Internet. It is a grand network of millions of users, surfing and sharing billions of files, all day, every day. To individuals holding secures on happy property, this is a frightening proposition. After all, there is virtually no protection for these copyright holders from the misuse of their property. But, as Scott Sullivan, writer for The FBI Law Enforcement publicise stated, as history has proven, technological and societal advances usually come with a price. The price society is paying for the Internet is a loss of copyright protection by laws for their intellectual material.Napster is a good example of how these intellectual property rights are being compromised on the Internet. Napster is a simple, yet sophisticated program created by a young college student named Shawn Fanning that enables users to anonymously change over and share audio files known as MP3s. During its infancy, Napster only had approximately 3,000 users. At that time, Napster could probably have be en protected by the Audio Home arranging Act, which gives consumers the right to create and transfer digital music for noncommercial purposes (Gurly). Since that time, tally to Chris Sherman, writer for the magazine Online, Napster has become the most successful new mesh technology ever by gaining more than 25 million registered users in just over a year or humanity. At this point, however, the save Industry Association of America (RIAA) is quite unhappy with Napsters existence and its service. They believe the fact that millions of users can share songs with one another is a violation of copyright and constitutes outright theft of intellectual property (Sherman). The RIAA won a lawsuit under this argument against Napster in early 2001, so the program may go offline unless a compromise is reached. If the final public opinion is made to stop Napsters service, doing so will not be difficult because it is a centralized service. However, file sharing, a mainstay of web activity t hats considered almost a right by umteen users, is too popular to stomp out in one trim swoop (Sherman). The technology under which Napster operates, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), has been in use since 1971. It would be as difficult to destroy this technology as it would music itself. Nonetheless, as with many other technologies that threaten to freely circulate copyrighted music, the RIAA is attempting to stop the file sharing movement in its tracks. Alex Torralbas, who has worked in the recording industry, states, in the 1980s they (the RIAA) effectively killed the digital audio tape, and in the 70s, albums and tapes bore skull-and-crossbones stickers warning buyers against taping the music on cassettes.