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Napster is unethical
Napster legal case study
Napster legal case study
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Amidst the hot debate about whether or not music should be free, are ethical and moral considerations as well. The emergence of digital entertainment, whether MP3, peer-to-peer (P2P) applications, video streaming, or audio books, has caused an inevitable shift in the entertainment market (Weiss, 2006). Napster rapidly became a success when it started allowing its customers to download MP3 music free of charge. In fact, Napster’s form of file-sharing shifted the entertainment market from a commodity base to a service base by eliminating cost to the customer. This paper will discuss the major issues in this case study, who the key stakeholders are and how they have changed since Napster’s beginning, what the stakes were for the different constituencies associated with Napster’s first and second incarnation, why Napster was unable to succeed in the marketplace, and what the appropriate balance is between fair use rights of consumers and the financial interest of artists and the recording companies. Organizations like Napster take away a content owner’s ability to restrict the supply of his/her intellectual property on a large scale. Thus, the ethical concern was that artist in the music industry as well as major record labels would not be rightfully compensated for their work (Weiss, 2006). In the absence of control, copyright owners would be unable to maintain pricing control, and revenues would be lost as they are predominately driven from CD sales. As a result, the music industry has resorted to litigation and restrictive usage rules on licensed or retailed digital products (Weiss, 2006). In the beginning Napster was not concerned with protecting the intellectual property rights of the artists and songwriters (Weiss, 2006). ... ... middle of paper ... ... be used in part to compensate the record companies and artists for providing music. Napster made a decision in the best interest of everyone and that was to take away the “free” idea of Napster (Weiss, 2006). In conclusion, the Napster saga continued as it agreed to team up with various artists to provide a secure membership-based service. This new venture will provide the Napster community with quality file-sharing while also providing payments to right holders, including recording artists, songwriters, recording companies, and music publishers. Therefore, a resolution to satisfying the music industries argument would be to charge a fee for the use of the system so all parties will be satisfied. Works Cited Weiss, J.W. (2006). Business Ethics: A Stakeholder and Issues Management Approach, Fourth Edition. Mason, OH: South-Western Thomson Higher Education.
Napster is a virtual community, which consists of music news and chat-rooms, the main feature it offers is an easy way to download MP3's (music files). This controversial service has brought the lawsuit to Napster. Napster allows its subscribers to download the music files without charge. It is not however, from Napster that the subscribers get these files. It is from each other. The users share their hard drives so that other users can download any of their music files that they want.
We have all watched over the last year and a half as the controversy over the digital music provider Napster has clogged our television screens and lined our floors in the forms of newspaper articles. We are also well aware of the implications and revenue losses that the service either directly or indirectly causes. What I am going to investigate more in-depth in this article is, more specifically, the effect that Napster has on the operations of record stores worldwide. I am going to try to describe the most profound effects that Napster has on this industry.
Simply put; All things are good until man makes it otherwise. And by using Burke's "lens" we can look at the internet use of Napster and see how different people have found different views of it and how now some people deem Napster as bad or in a negative lens they see Napster. The Napster software, launched early in 1999, allows internet users to share and download MP3 files directly from any computer connected to the Napster network. The software is used by downloading a client program from the Napster site and then connecting to the network through this software, which allows sharing of MP3 files between all users connected to the network.
McArdle argues that although music file-sharing is easily assessable and available in the millennium generation, free music file-sharing is causing damage to individuals involved in the music industry and in the entertainment industry. McArdle starts off the article by mentioning that record labels suffer the most financially in the year 2009. She also mentions that for the last decade, record labels business are experiencing decreases in revenues. McArdle criticizes the millennium generation for violating property rights of recording labels and the music industry. Moreover, McArdle points out that many young people in this millennium generation are the ones who are downloading music for free. She discusses how hard it was for people to look for music and to copy music in the past history compared to the present. She also points out that young people in the millennium generation do not see downloading music for free as a huge problem. She concludes her article by stating that perhaps music piracy is not such a negative trend. Although it affects individua...
Most recently the Supreme Court had to decide whether it was fair or not for music fans to download their favorite songs free of any royalties to the artists. The program, design by two college students, is named Napster and its designed to allow the sharing of mp3 music files over the Internet. Currently, the program is still available and operating with much support from its users.
Richard Simmons, the lead singer of the rock band KISS, has been cited (should “as” be here? Not sure.) speaking out in a distasteful and informal manner against illegal file sharing with the following quote: “It’s only their (you should define who “they” are before this. Seems a little out of context. It seems like you are still addressing file sharing, which is what you introduce the quote as being about, but in reality, he is addressing the people who allow it, whoever they may be) fault for letting foxes get into the henhouse and then wondering why there’s no eggs or chickens. Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid’s face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning”(Source). In his statement, Richard encapsulates the indignation many musicians feel towards people who steal music through file sharing (also known as music piracy). This anger is warranted by the morally accepted viewpoint that stealing is unethical. Music piracy is not measly pilfering, either. “As a consequence of global and U.S.-based piracy of sound recordings, the U.S. economy loses $12.5 billion in total output annually”(Source). However, what if the unhappiness that Richard and other artists feel from illegal file sharing also caused millions of people to be happy? Would the wrongs (that) stealing music caused be morally justified by the prodigious quantity of pleasure generated by music piracy? This is a question similar to one that the founder of a philosophy known as utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham, asked himself. Through the question, Bentham concluded that “[t]he highest principle of morality is to maximize happiness, the overall balance of...
An “analyst” was quoted in the case (in 2002) as saying that “people will pay for music on the Internet, eventually.” This person was skeptical of the willingness of consumers to pay for
According to the text A Gift of Fire, Napster “opened on the Web in 1999 as a service that allowed its users to copy songs in MP3 files from the hard disks of other users” (Baase, 2013, p. 192, Section 4.1.6 Sharing Music: The Napster Case). Napster was, however, “copying and distributing most of the songs they traded without authorization” (A Gift of Fire, Section 4.1.6 Sharing Music: The Napster Case). This unauthorized file sharing resulted in a lawsuit - “eighteen record companies sued for contributory infringement claiming that Napster users were blatantly infringing copyrights by digitally reproducing and distributing music without a license” (Communications Law: Liberties, Restraints and the Modern Media, 2011, p. 359).
The story really begins with Napster and its free software that allowed users to swap music across the Internet for free using peer-to-peer networks. While Shawn Fanning was attending Northeastern University in Boston, he wanted an easier method of finding music than by searching IRC or Lycos. John Fanning of Hull, Massachusetts, who is Shawn's uncle, struck an agreement which gave Shawn 30% control of the company, with the rest going to his uncle. Napster began to build an office and executive team in San Mateo, California, in September of 1999. Napster was the first of the massively popular peer-to-peer file sharing systems, although it was not fully peer-to-peer since it used central servers to maintain lists of connected systems and the files they provideddirectories, effectivelywhile actual transactions were conducted directly between machines. Although there were already media which facilitated the sharing of files across the Internet, such as IRC, Hotline, and USENET, Napster specialized exclusively in music in the form of MP3 files and presented a user-friendly interface. The result was a system whose popularity generated an enormous selection of music to download. Napster became the launching pad for the explosive growth of the MP3 format and the proliferation of unlicensed copyrights.
Is important for anyone who has created any intellectual property to protect it. In the music industry, in order for someone to protect their work, they must obtain a copyright. Music has been around before anyone could obtain a copyright and when the invention of the computer came along it made it easier for someone to steal another artist's intellectual property with the help of the internet. This paper will cover what events have taken a big role in copyright protection for artist, the consequences if someone was to break the rules of a copyright which is called copyright infringement, and how will a copyright hold in the future. Were copyrights enacted without the thought of life changing technology, and how can some music companies surpass copyright infringement and make a profit from the artist? Can a copyright really make that much of a difference in the world we know today?
In 2000, Metallica filed a lawsuit against Napster and won. As a result, Napster banned about 300,000 of its users who were sharing Metallica songs. Soon after, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) filed a suit against Napster and the file-sharing server was forced to shut down. [1]
Moreover, hackers came up with new ways to remove the digital copyrights so the same as before one downloads music and distributes them around. The industry gets its revenue from selling this content, whether it’s online or in stores, this funds new projects and allows for better products in the future. The public should be aware of this, downloading the content for free, and not buying it will decrease revenue for the companies, stopping them from undertaking future projects. “Production companies should lower the price on their products, I can’t buy music for at least 20$ per album and DVDs for 30$, I only make 200$ per month,” said George Issa, a music fan who spends most of his nights downloading music from the internet, “when there is an album or movie that I really like, I try to buy it legally, I don’t think I am doing anything wrong, they are wrong making money off our backs,” he added.
The music industry started in the mid 18th century with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Through the decades there has been a great increase in this industry; however, the revenues for this industry have declined by half in the last 10 years. This has been caused by music piracy, which “is the copying and distributing of copies of a piece of music for which the composer, recording artist, or copyright-holding record company did not give consent” . After 1980’s, when the Internet was released to public, people started to develop programs and websites in which they could share music, videos, and information with...
Napster is a company that developed the so-called peer-to-peer technology that lets people search and retrieve music files directly from one another's personal computers. When Napster first came out, millions of internet users worldwide were illegally downloading and distributing copyrighted music, videos, images, and software for free. After being vilified by the entertainment industry, which claims that Napster and any similar programs could make piracy of almost any digital work unstoppable, and many court battles, Napster was ordered by court to be shutdown in 2000. The technology has been praised as a revolutionary development for the Internet—unaware of the problems that would arise from such practices. However, the termination of Napster was not enough, months later, dozens of new, like programs were being developed and used. And since Napster, not much has been done to stop these latest downloading programs.
Now let’s flash forward back to present day when all that doesn’t happen anymore. Instead of saving of our money and begging our parents to take us to the store to buy a newly released album, we simply get on our computer, go to a website and download the album for free. It doesn’t matter what website it is, whether it is Limewire, Frostwire, or Pirate Bay, people will be happy with their free album. There are still some kids to this day who enjoy going to the store and buying and listening to an album the old-fashioned way but we have to wonder how bad things will get as more and more people are getting equipped with the Internet and the use of downloading music. While the internet might be making life easier for all, the growing use of downloading music on the Internet is growing into a detrimental and illegal problem.