Washam 1

Is Napster Stealing?
The web site Napster has become a very popular site on the Internet this past year.

The web site was founded by 19-year-old Shawn Fanning. Fanning thought up the ideal of
Napster while a freshman at Northwestern University. In May of 1999, Fanning was
looking for digital music files (MP3) on the Internet and became frustrated about how
hard it was. Fanning later got financial support from a friend a created the software that
makes Napster possible (Hartigan). The Napster web site has been very popular since it
started. Over twenty million people have downloaded the program.

The Napster web site can be accessed at Napster.com. Once you are there you can
download the software onto your computer. When the download completes your
computer is connected to everyone else who has downloaded the program. Napster
consist of a library, search engine, and a chat room. The library is where you store your
MP3 files that you have downloaded. The search engine is where your can search other
peoples computers and download files they have. All you have to do is put in a bands
name and song title and hit find it on the task bar and instantly one hundred songs appear
ready to be downloaded. The chat room allows you to talk to people and find out what
kind of songs they have.

Napster sounds great for free music but some of the people who make that music
are not happy. The Record Industry Association of America (IRAA) filed a lawsuit in the
San Francisco federal court saying that Napster users are violating copyright laws (Stone
58). The IRAA lawsuit says Napster is responsible for the copyright violations. The
lawsuit also says that copyright music is being shared by Napster users and that violates
the Musical Copyright Act of 1902. The IRAA lawsuit is also saying that Napster is
violating the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998. The Digital Millenium Copyright
Act of 1998 allows MP3 files to be linked by search engines but if the link contains
copyright music than the engine must remove it (Mann). Napster is also being sued by the
Washam 2
rock band Metallica and the rapper Dr. Dre because they say they their music is being
illegally pirated on Napster. Lars Ulrich, Metallica’s drummer, is the media spokesperson
for the RIAA. Ulrich told Ron Harris of the Associated Press that if Napster users are
stealing our music just like if they went down to the record store and stole it off the shelf.

He has also identified 335, 000 Napster users that are trading Metallica’s copyrighted
music without their permission. Ulrich is asking Napster to ban these users from the site
(Borland). The IRAA also filed suit against two universities saying that they have a
responsible to stop illegal activity on their computer systems. As a result of this lawsuit
Yale University and Indiana University banned the web site. Many other colleges and
universities followed because of fear of being sued (Harris).

On Napster’s side of the lawsuit they are saying that the entire lawsuit should be
dropped because the web site is not directly responsible for the copyright violations.

Napster claims that it just provides the software to share the MP3 files and does not
provide any files to be downloaded. Napster is also arguing that it is protected from
copyright violations under the digital copyright laws. Napster also provides names of
twenty-five thousand artist that say it is all right for their songs to be on Napster (Mann).

Limp Bizkit and Cypress Hill even went on a free ticket tour, sponsored by Napster, to
show their support for Napster. Napster also replied to what Ulrich said in the Associated
Press by saying that it would comply with Metallica demands to remove their songs from
Napster.

I believe that Napster technology is not a form of computer piracy as long as it is
used responsible. In my opinion downloading songs off Napster is not piracy as long as
you use them for your own personal use. I have almost two hundred songs downloaded
from Napster and I do not feel I am breaking the law. I use the songs on my hard drive
just to listen too while I am in my dorm room. I think that Napster is a good and fun
technology but can turn into a form of free compact disc.

Washam 3
Almost every computer is equipped with a compact disc burner, which allows people to
make duplicate compact disc