IP Law and the Napster Case

Napster was an American company that created a revolutionary platform that allowed for music sharing online. Originally, it was established as a peer-to-peer file sharing service that emphasized the exchange of MP3 formatted soundtracks. Founded in 1999, by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, who rebounded post-Napster to become the first President of Facebook, it operated between June 1999 and July 2001. It was a revolutionary because the network allowed for music to be “set free” – suddenly, an incredible amount of information was made available on the Internet, a relatively new forum that had yet to experience huge waves. Napster was that wave – it democratized the access to information and enabled the common user to listen to millions of songs without having to pay for it. Within a few months of its opening, it had 20 million users – an exponential growth which would attract the attention of large media companies, record labels, and famous bands like Metallica, which would eventually lead to the downfall of Napster.

The approach that was taken by the music industry to take down file sharing service was to attack it from all sides – Napster was hit with several lawsuits from different sectors of the music industry. First to hit was A&M Records. A&M Records was actually not a single record label, but a group of plaintiffs that were all members of the RIAA, the Recording Industry Association of America. Some of these plaintiffs include Sony Music Entertainment, Virgin Records America, Universal Music Group, and Warner Bros. Records. When Napster was issued a preliminary injunction by the District Court, it appealed the decision at the Ninth Circuit. I chose to focus on the District Court case because it was where the arguments were ...

... middle of paper ...

...audiovisuel, 2003. 84-95. Print.

3. "Doctrine - AdvoCofer." Doctrine - AdvoCofer. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Apr. 2014. .

4. "Legal Realism in Action: indirect copyright liability's continuing tort work and Sony's De Facto Demise." UCLA Law Review. UCLA, n.d. Web. 2 Apr. 2014. .

5. Murray, Andrew. "Copyright in the Digital Environment." Information technology law: the law and society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 268. Print.

6. Rimmer, Matthew. Digital copyright and the consumer revolution hands off my iPod. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2007. Print.

7. Thierer, Adam D., and Clyde Wayne Crews. "Napster." Copy fights: the future of intellectual property in the information age. Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2002. 108-120. Print.