Word: napstering
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Next week the Napster case could come to a head when the two sides appear before a panel of appeals court judges. The record companies say they are confident they will prevail. "Napster is a temporary phenomenon," insists Hilary Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Association of America...
...think of Napster as just a way to steal intellectual property is to miss the impact it has already had on a music industry that many feel was ripe for revolutionary change. Napster makes music available a la carte, one tune at a time--a welcome relief to fans tired of having to pay album prices to get their hands on one or two good songs. It also unlocks--and makes available for download--the greatest music library in the history of the world, much of it all but forgotten by the major labels. A few clicks of that mouse...
There is no underestimating the threat that all this free file sharing poses to existing business models. There are as many as 1 billion music files available on Napster users' computers--a good chunk of the music backlist that record labels own and have traditionally profited handsomely from. Forrester Research last week unveiled a study predicting that within five years the music industry will lose $ 3.1 billion to piracy and the newfound independence of musicians. The music labels tried for a while to convince themselves that online piracy was a young person's sport, something that would be outgrown, like...
...major recording labels. Although copyright laws are clear and well established and the legal system seems likely to back the music industry, the results in court have so far been mixed. In July a San Francisco district court issued a sweeping order that would have all but shut Napster down. That ruling was immediately stayed pending appeal. In the meantime, a federal judge in New York earlier this month slammed a crippling fine on MP3.com--a company that was trying to operate within the rules of copyright. Judge Jed Rakoff awarded Universal Music Group damages of $25,000 for each...
Perhaps. But peer-to-peer file sharing, it's now clear, is here to stay. Even if Napster is driven out of business, there are new, even more intractable sharing systems--notably Gnutella and Freenet--that allow files to be traded directly from PC to PC, without going through a single website like Napster's. These renegade services would be harder to shut down because they have no centralized plugs to pull, no company officers to sue. Former Public Enemy rapper Chuck D got it right: trying to stop file sharing over the Internet, he says, "is like trying...