Do you ever wonder where peer-to-peer file sharing started and how it was determined illegal? We hear all the time about people using P-2-P file sharing and how the governmet tries to stop it yet we have never truely figured out what made this illegal in a court of law.
In 1999 a file sharing network known as Napster was sued by the RIAA in a court of law claiming that the site allowed it's users to transfer free music back and forth from computer to computer. At the time of the case this was a huge deal to decide wether it was illegal or not due to the newness of P2P file sharing. The debate was wether or not it is cosidered stealing when the item in question is not a physical product that you can hold in your hands.
The court ruled in favor of the RIAA and decided that any P2P file sharing of copyrrighted material was illegal and a penalty should be insued upo the users and creators of the network. Soon after the case Napster when bankrupt and shut down the network. Sure enough the company decided that they were not going to give up and came up with another innovative way to stay into the music sharing business without getting into trouble. Napster decided that they would charge their customers monthly for access to unlimited music, music that can only be heard by connecting online to the network and listening to it through their servers. This created a way to give their customers what they want and at the same time is legal because there is no downloading or file sharing involved.
I could see why they got sue, because they don't even have the permission from the author and by doing that I am assuming that the author of the songs wouldn't even make money. Well if they are now getting paid for customers listening to the songs, what about the author of the song do they get any money from it?
ReplyDeleteKawg Yang
I agree in saying that Napster was doing wrong in giving users free music but the thing is it will be impossible to ever get people from downloading free music from other sources illegally. People seem to rather risk the chance of getting into trouble with the law than to buy their own music from online or the store. I believe they should find another way to maybe charge monthly for subscribers but have unlimited music downloads, that way people will still be paying for it. (jcapatin@uncc.edu)
ReplyDeleteI agree with the post above that regardless of the risks, people are always going to stream and download free music. It is too easy and people don't feel like the should be paying for music on ITunes when they can download an entire album for free. I think that by charging subscribers a monthly or yearly fee but give them unlimited downloading would combat this issue.
ReplyDeleteMeaghann Smith