Copyright Law: Music Downloads
Music piracy is by no means a new phenomenon. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when music was sold in the form of printed "sheet music," pirates took advantage of a the-then newly developed technology called photolithography and sold duplicate copies of the 'legal music' at half the price -- causing great annoyance among the music publishing companies. (Johns, 2002, p. 68) Much later, the 1960s and 70s saw the proliferation of bootlegged songs of the legendary Bob Dylan that almost rivaled the sale of the singer's officially released songs. The recent development of computers, the Internet and music compression technologies such as MP3, however, have given a totally new dimension to music privacy. Free music downloads and the exchange of music files over the Internet has reached such daunting proportions that the music industry considers it as the single biggest threat to its very survival. The music recording companies have adopted a zero tolerance policy towards such practice and have resorted to extensive litigation to stop companies and even private individuals from unauthorized music downloads and exchange over the Internet. Although the opponents of music piracy vehemently justify their position on the basis of intellectual property rights and ethics, unrestricted exchange of music on the Internet is considered as perfectly legitimate by large sections of the public. This paper discusses whether downloading of music from the Internet should be unrestricted and free by looking at both sides of the issue. While doing so, recent court cases about music piracy in the United States and Australia, shall also be examined.
The Beginnings of Music Downloads on the Internet
For a considerable period after the start of the Internet, it was not possible to download music on the net as audio and sound files are bulky and the slow modem speeds meant that it took a very long time for such files to download. Then came the data compression technology called MP3 in 1996, which made digital audio file transfer over the Internet possible and music piracy on the net took off in a big way. (Paradise 1999, p. 240) number of Web sites, offering free music downloads, sprang up on the Internet. In the initial years, these were mainly run by college students who had easy access to the Internet on college campuses, were computer savvy, and loved music. Later on, high profile companies like Napster became leading providers of free music on the net by introducing a link for Internet users to exchange their music files.
The Napster Lawsuit & its Aftermath
Napster attracted the ire of the music recording industry, which filed lawsuits (A&M Records Inc. et al. Vs. Napster) against the company in the U.S. courts in 2001. A Californian district court ruled against Napster, ordering it to close its file-transferring service. Ultimately, the ninth circuit appeal's court upheld the decision of the district court against Napster in 2001. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the decision in a landmark ruling in 2002 that forced Napster to close down its file-transferring Website and file for bankruptcy. ("Napster Lawsuit," 2002 Findlaw) The court ruling, however, was far from a death-blow to the free downloading business on the Internet as there were a number of grey areas in the court's ruling that did not lift the cloud of confusion about the application of copyright laws on the Internet. Other companies, such as the Dutch-based Kazaa, Grokster, and StreamCast Networks quickly stepped into the shoes of Napster to fulfill the burgeoning demand of free music download by the public. These new organizations circumvented the ruling against infringement of the copyright laws by using peer-to-peer network sharing, without the need for a central Web site like Napster's. (Burgunder, 2002 p. 686) By using a software that directly linked the computers of the music file-sharers, these companies could claim that they had no control over the activities of the file-sharing individuals.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was not impressed with this "technicality" and filed similar suits against the new entrants in the file-sharing business including Kazaa. Initially, a Dutch court ordered the owners of the Kazaa software to stop distributing the music-sharing software over the Internet, but in March 2002 the Amsterdam Court of Justice ruled on appeal that the Kazaa software owners were not liable for abuse of their file-sharing program, which had other uses besides downloading copyrighted music and films.
Current Scale of Internet Music Downloads
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