The Napster Controversy

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The Arguments Contd...

Analysts claimed that the real problem here was the fact that music, words, ideas - all intellectual property - were somehow not deemed worthy of protection as 'real' things such as diamonds were. According to a report,³ even the people who created the intellectual property might not really appreciate the ethical aspects of the issue because deep down they could be thrilled that someone else liked their work so much as to steal it. However, it can not be denied that all artists would prefer to be paid for their creations.

Napster's main contention was that the file-sharing system was not illegal. Until this technology was formally declared illegal in a court, this logic seemed to be sound enough. The basic Napster mechanism involved copying a music file from some other person and allowing others to copy one's files. If these activities were illegal then even copying and e mailing the full text of a theoretically copyright-protected Internet-based article would be illegal. Napster claimed that the controversy seemed to have been blown out of proportion only because of the losses in copyright revenue foreseen by the recording industry. Napster was banking heavily on a 1984 US Supreme Court decision that not only legitimized Sony Corp.'s Betamax VCR, but also provided legal groundwork for future clashes between copyright law and a new technology. In this case, the high court had ruled that a technology that might be used for piracy and other copyright violations cannot be banned - as long as it was also capable of 'substantial noninfringing uses' that were legal.

The context of the ruling was the complaint by the US movie industry in the late 1970s that the then-new videocassette recorder should be taken off the market, in part because it could be used to make pirated copies of movies. The RIAA reportedly enforced strict regulations on the distribution and production of music. An analyst commented, "They now see a loss of control, they don't understand the Net or technology, and so when someone is fearful or scared the thing to do is say, 'We are going to sue you.'"

Earlier, RIAA had successfully defeated the website MP3.com, which was involved in the online distribution of music. MP3.com had to pay fines totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. RIAA held that a person should have to pay for downloading a MP3 file. Thus, even if a customer who had bought a CD containing a particular song earlier, wanted to download its MP3 version, he would have to pay for it. This was criticized severely by many music lovers, stating that it was similar to 'asking a person buying a trouser to pay extra if he wanted to let his friends wear it.'

However, while MP3.com, which stored music on its own servers, could be stopped, it was difficult to regulate the 'peer-to-peer' websites, because they did not store music on their servers. Thus soon after Napster stopped offering its services, several new websites - Gnutella, iMesh, AudioGalaxy, OpenNap, BearShare, MusicCity, LimeWire, Grokster - started offering similar services.

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3] Intellectual property: Napster and ethics, Network World, September 4, 2001.