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Napster
What
is Napster?
Napster is a program, created by a 19-year-old student,
which allows to share music files (in the MP3 format) over the Net with other
Napster users.
When you join Napster, Napster searches your hard drive
to find out what MP3s you have. These files then become available to other
Napster users. Similarly, you can access the MP3 collections of other users.
You can either listen to the files directly or make a copy onto your own hard
drive.
As Napster says about itself: "the MP3 files that you locate
using Napster are not stored on Napster's servers. Napster does not, and
cannot, control what content is available to you using the Napster browser.
Napster users decide what content to make available to others using the Napster
browser, and what content to download. Users are responsible for complying with
all applicable federal and state laws applicable to such content, including
copyright laws."
"Napster respects copyright law and expects our users
to do the same. Unauthorized copying, distribution, modification, public
display, or public performance of copyrighted works is an infringement of the
copyright holders' rights."
Why is Napster such a big deal?
In
reality, the vast bulk of what is 'shared' using Napster is copyright-protected
music files. There is little question that Napster facilitates the large-scale
infringement of copyright.
However, it must be remembered that this is a new
technology and there are many problems to be ironed out (such as ensuring
payment to artists). Just as the film studios attempted to strangle new VCR
technology at birth in the late 70's/early 80's (but eventually came to love it
as a principal source of revenue), so too have the record companies attacked
Napster. As of 1 August, the record companies obtained an interim injunction
against Napster which was overturned on appeal. The actual case is likely to be
heard in September.
Napster (and its many clones such as Gnutella) have
the potential to share any digital file, including digitised films or text. The
concept has proven to enormously popular and will probably continue in some
form regardless of any legal decision. Eventually multinational content
companies will come to use Napster-like technologies and change their business
models accordingly (unfortunately this seems to be a very slow process). Let's
hope that they don't succeed in destroying a new technology where the film
studios failed 20 years ago...
Is all digital dissemination like
Napster?
No, it isn't. A lot of stuff is made available over the
Internet by the author for free (this pretty well sums up the World Wide Web).
Other material is disseminated (though not on the Web) with the full permission
of the law by libraries and universities (by contrast, what Napster is doing is
legally dubious in copyright terms).
For example, an article in
Salon called 'The
Napster Library' compared the recent efforts of the San Francisco Public
Library to allow the electronic loan of library material to Napster. A closer
reading revealed that: 'most of the books offered through
NetLibrary are from the public domain
archives of Project Gutenberg or academic publishers.' This means that material
being loaned (copies of books disappear off your hard drive when they're due)
is either out of copyright or licensed by a publisher. There's no legal
question mark here.
It's important not to confuse this kind of inventive
and perfectly legal use of new technologies with Napster-like uses. |
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