Word: napstering
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Napster Promotes Internet Piracy
...Napster software allows users to search for and download MP3 files from other users, while at the same time making their own collection universally available. As a result, Napster has been wading through uncharted legal waters since its founding, and has already been sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It is strange that the recording industry has been so averse to the sharing of MP3 files; college students are some of the industry's best customers and it has been argued that listening to MP3 files increases, rather than decreases, students' music purchases...
...artistic pride of the band that produced "Kill 'Em All" gives no strength to a lawsuit that should fail on the merits. The suit, which was filed by Metallica, E/M Ventures and Creeping Death Music, claims that by failing to block student access to the Napster servers, Yale University, Indiana University and the University of Southern California violated the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute. Such a claim should not be allowed to stand. Although the majority of MP3 files are illegal copies of protected music, online distribution of free music is growing, and there are few channels...
Technology may soon make the decision in this particular lawsuit obsolete; new programs known as "Gnutella" and "FreeNet" may allow the Napster-like sharing of all types of data, not just MP3 files, and such services would be difficult to shut down because they would not rely, as does Napster, on a central server for searches. However, if carried to its conclusion, the spirit in which the lawsuit was filed would make universities into electronic gatekeepers, watching each packet of data sent across the network and monitoring students' activities online for fear of being held legally responsible...
Such a role is incompatible with a university's mission to promote academic and intellectual freedom. Harvard University has already expressed its well-founded intent to continue to allow Napster use, and Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 has rightly written that "content filtering would be wholly incompatible with the principle of free inquiry and open access to information...