Napster is a great concept, encouraging the sharing of music across cultural and physical boundaries, and giving everyone access to this important pillar of human culture.
It is believed that the record industry is losing money because of Napster, despite arguments that Napster could boost record sales.
Jason Norwood-Young, technology editor, ITWeb
Unfortunately for this maverick company, it chose to ignore that most of its traffic is a blatant copyright infringement. Its users are breaking the law, and it is the conduit for this illegal activity.
Reading through the discussion groups hosted on the Napster site (www.napster.com), it appears that the Napster case is built on hot air and wishful thinking. A few brave souls have posted comments arguing against Napster, and are always shot down, but seldom with a well thought-out reply. Napster`s users tend to react to criticism with foul language and abuse, belying the fact that not even they have a good pro-Napster argument.
When they do try to make a point instead of following intimidation tactics, the argument that many of Napster`s users and supporters put forward that the record industry sucks up most of the profit from CD sales intended for the artists is weak from a moralistic point of view, and ridiculous from a legal perspective.
Starving artists
The record labels own the copyright to the material, and the method of acquiring that copyright is not the general public`s concern. Any artist that chooses to sign rights over to a record label must live with that decision. Just because they are starving artists does not excuse them from a legal binding.
Furthermore, it is believed that the record industry is losing money because of Napster, despite arguments that Napster could boost record sales. Perhaps it could be used to benefit the industry, but at the moment, it seems that its primary use is to freely acquire something that someone else owns. The law generally refers to this as theft.
Napster CEO Hank Barry`s stated in a recent press release that "members of the Napster community who share music on a person-to-person non-commercial basis are not violating any law".
But it could be argued that firstly, there is no indication that the music that one member shares with another was purchased legally; secondly, a person-to-person crime is still a crime; thirdly, reassuring the community that they are not violating any law is dangerous, considering the judgement of this case has not been passed yet.
The belief that Napster`s weight in numbers (32 million users) should force the US government to rethink its laws is ludicrous. Just because 32 million people are breaking the law doesn`t mean the law should be changed for them.
High jump
Of course there are hundreds of other companies that encourage copyright infringements in similar ways. Napster certainly must claim knowledge of use of its medium for illegal file transfers. As was proved by the downfall of the US tobacco companies, once awareness of illegal activity has been proved, Napster could be in for the high jump, especially in civil suits against record companies with provable profit loss.
The Napster debacle has raised certain issues that should be addressed beyond the boundary of this specific case, such as the purported abuse of artists` work by record labels, as well as the need to modify copyright laws for digital media.
Another less publicised issue that has been fought ever since biblical times is whether the law should cater for the people or the people for the law.
If Napster does manage to win its case, then the former will prove to be true, although we will have to count those starving artists and their record labels as not part of the populous. They are the ones with something to lose if Napster wins its case and sets a precedent, while Napster`s users stand to lose something they never owned to begin with.
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