Word: napstering
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Many music fans support Napster because they believe that the quickest way to rid the airwaves and the world of the studio-created trash that now dominates is to destroy the commercial viability of recorded music. Force everyone back onto the stage, and then we'll see who the real artists...
Though it ruled out what had been most of Napster's case, the Feb. 12 decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals was not a mortal blow to the peer-to-peer model. But the next round of Napster-inspired lawsuits, some of which are already on the horizon, will soon reveal whether the decision was a one-time strike against a poster child for music piracy--or the beginning of a long crusade against promising technological advances...
...Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) had already sent more than 60 letters to ISPs of servers running OpenNap, an open-source program that uses the Napster protocol to provide similar peer-to-peer indexing. A user of OpenNap first employs any of a number of client programs (like Napster's MusicShare) to open up a hard drive for outside access; a list of contents are then uploaded to the OpenNap server, which does nothing but publish a directory of connected clients and offer a means of searching them. Any downloads are conducted between users, and the files--any file...
...doctrine of contributory infringement is one unique to the copyright code. Refusing to stop illegal activity when you have a financial interest in it is known as "vicarious" infringement, and Napster was probably guilty of that too. But anyone who encourages or assists in the violation of copyright can be guilty of contributory infringement, a label that may become a dangerous catchall...
When the Ninth Circuit found Napster liable for contributory infringement, it fortunately reiterated the Supreme Court's standard that devices capable of substantial non-infringing uses are still legal. The Napster protocol, which is merely a set of instructions for sending and receiving files, is no more illegal than the Windows "copy file" function. Beneficial, content-neutral technologies can easily be hijacked by pirates who find them useful, but they should not be banned for that reason alone. Otherwise, VCR's and tape decks would have been banned long ago for contributing to copyright infringement--as they almost were until...