This did not end the matter, of course, and appeared to be addressed more at the copier than at sites facilitating sharing, which would become the next target.
File Sharing Services
Napster was the best known but hardly the only website devoted to facilitating file sharing among subscribers. After the courts caused Napster to shut down, at least in its original form, other sites emerged to take its place. A court ruling against two peer-to-peer file-sharing networks created a sense of uncertainty even as other sites took their place, and critics charged that such rulings were stifling innovation and making the next generation of computer uses less sure, to the detriment of all (Zeller C1).
The top five companies are unified in the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the group that sued Napster to stop the trading of copyrighted music online (though this suit was only the first of many). This is one of the ways these companies control the music -- through associations which promote their interests. More generally, though, these companies have a lot of money and a well-established list of artists with considerable appeal. They produce and distribute the records of these artists and gain power as a result, meaning that if they want to get certain lesser artists heard and stocked in stores, they can do so because their popular artists give them leverage. They also take up a large percentage of shelf space in record stores for the same reason, which also has the effect of keeping lesser known labels out of these stores.
The process has long required a huge organization, large outlays of money, and related business support, and these companies have developed just that over the years. First, the companies find and sign artists to contracts. Then, they have to pay for the recording session and related production expenses to make a record. Once the recording is done, it is fashioned into an album (today, a CD) with all the expenses involved in this process, from the pressing of the CD to the creation and manufacture of the covers. Tracks are selected for promotion and are released to radio stations for air play. Money is spent on promotion and advertising, and the CDs are distributed to record companies across the country. This suggests the steps the process has included for decades: singer to label to distributor to retailer to media outlet to consumer.
Napster reduced the number of CDs that are sold by giving music consumers a different way to get the same material, a way that involved no cost to themselves. The RIAA began filing suit against some of the consumers who could be identified as having placed files on Napster, and the RIAA continues to sue such users of other file-sharing services as well. In time, the RIAA and other entities also sued Napster and forced the company to stop its file-sharing operations. As the court case proceeded, however, the role of Napster and similar sites remained uncertain as far as legalities were concerned, but the decision would eventually hold that "distributors of popular software for sharing music and videos online can be held responsible for theft if they encourage or induce their users to illegally swap copyrighted works" (Krim A01). The ruling was unanimous on the part of the Supreme Court, assuring that the rule would be understood and followed from thereafter. However, the issue is still not fully settled, and there are many other types of file-sharing that may have to be litigated separately before the issue is settled. As both sides not, though, the technology changes so rapidly that any one court decision may have only minimal effect in the long-term.
Yegyazarian points out how the Grokster case, the second file-sharing decision, ended speculation about the legality of file-sharing as performed by Grokster, Napster, and StreamCast, among others. This area of the law is uncertain because the technology is new and has not yet been addressed by the legislator to the degree needed, so such court decisions help clarify the law and point to how everyone involved should behave. Still, many saw this decision as having a chilling effect on technical innovation, and the reason for this was said to be because "the court introduced a new standard for judging a company's liability when it makes products that can be (and then are) used to violate copyright," the standard of "active inducement" (Yegyazarian C1).
A legal analysis emphasizes this same idea and states...
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