Essay About Music Industry Change Its Tune And Computers Of Other Online Napster Members

Can the Music Industry Change Its Tune?
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Would you pay $15.99 for a CD of your favorite recording artist if you could get it for
free on the Web? This question has shaken the music industry to its foundations. A
tremendous number of Internet users have taken advantage of online file-sharing
services where they can download digitized music files from other users free of charge.
The first such service to be widely used was Napster. Its Web site provided
software and services that enabled users to locate any of the 1 billion digitized MP3
music files on the computers of other online Napster members and copy them onto their
own computers for free. Napsters own computers did not store any music files, but
instead acted as a matchmaker. To obtain a specific music file, you would sign on to the
Napster Web site and type in the name of the desired song. Napsters central title index
would display the connected computers with that specific song. Napster then established
a direct connection between the requesting computer and the one storing the desired
music file. Your Napster software then would download that file onto your computer.
You could play the song on your computer and copy it onto CDs. If you stored it on
your computer, others could copy it from you. Napster quickly became so popular that
when it was shut down in 2001, it had more than 80 million users worldwide.
Napster users could legally copy and trade uncopyrighted material, but
reproducing copyrighted files without permission is illegal because the recipient does
not compensate the owner for the use of the intellectual property. In December 1999,
the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), representing the five major
music recording companies (Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, BMG, and
EMI), which together were responsible for 80 percent of recorded music, sued Napster
for violating copyright laws. U.S. courts ordered Napster to stop allowing users to share
copyrighted music files, and the site closed down in July 2002 when it declared
bankruptcy. It has since been transformed into a legal fee-based online digital music
service.
Napster was held liable for the illegal copying of copyrighted songs because it
maintained a central index of members music on its own central computer. Its closure
did not stop widespread illegal music file sharing. Alternative “peer-to-peer”
approaches to free downloading were developed that did not require a centralized
computer to manage the file swapping. Services using this approach include Kazaa
(KaZaA), Morpheus, and Grokster. Many of the estimated 37 million Americans who
have downloaded music have done so using Kazaa. According to research firm
BigChampagne LLC, users download more than 1 billion songs per week from Kazaa,
Morpheus, and other file-sharing programs.
Kazaas corporate headquarters are located in Vanatu, a tiny independent island
near Australia. Kazaas software is stored on individual computers, enabling anyone to
locate servers where individuals have stored music files available to be copied. Once the
software locates the desired song, it establishes a direct peer-to-peer link between the
two computers and downloads the desired song file, with no one paying any fees.
Distributors of the software claim that their software has valuable legal uses, and they
are not responsible if millions of people use it illegally.
To profit from its software, Kazaa allows pop-up advertisements and unsolicited
e-mail from vendors who pay for the service. Because the free trading of digitized
materials does not go through a centralized computer, no one knows what or how many
songs are being downloaded or by whom. But Kazaa reported that, by June 2003, its
Media Desktop software for computer-to-computer file sharing had been downloaded
270 million times.
The courts have been unable to shut down sites that only make the peer-to-peer
software available. On October 2, 2001, through RIAA, the major record label firms
filed suit against Kazaa, Morpheus, and other peer-to-peer services, alleging copyright
infringement against all firms who use Media Desktop and similar software to swap
copyrighted materials. However, because the exchange of music files is strictly between
two individuals, Kazaa claims it is breaking no laws and so cannot be shut down.
Instead, individual users of Kazaas software are breaking laws and can be punished.
A big blow against the recording companies came on April 25, 2003, when a suit
brought by the major record labels, movie studios, and music publishers against
Grokster Ltd. (Grokster software) and StreamCast Networks Inc. (Morpheus software)
was decided in favor of the file-sharing services. The U.S. District Court in Los Angeles
ruled that the two companies could not