Copyright Infringement and Napster













Copyright Infringement and Napster Napster is a combination of “the features of existing programs: the instant-messaging system of Internet Relay Chat, the file-sharing functions of Microsoft Windows and the advanced searching and filtering capabilities of various search engines”(Greenfield). Basically, it is a really cool little program that a person can download off of the internet for free. Install it on the nearest computer, go through the setup, log on to the internet, and type in someone’s favorite artist. When the artist or song name is entered into the search engine part of Napster, it searches the Napster server and files of other users online at that time for your artist or song. Point-click-download, it is easy as that to get what some people call illegal Mp3’s. Mp3 stands for mpeg layer 3, a small music file that downloads quickly from the Internet. In 1999, a person by the name of Shawn Fanning decided to do something about the availability of these files. “Fanning figured out that if he combined a music-search function with a file-sharing system and, to facilitate communication, instant messaging, he could bypass the rat’s nest of legal and technical problems that kept great music from breaking out all over the World Wide Web” (Greenfield). So, over a period of months in 1999, he created the famed Napster. At 18 years of age, Shawn would become a teenager’s hero and best friend from whom to get new free music. Then these few lines of code and combined programs got this 18 year-old in a lot of trouble.  If you look at the back of a CD or on the credits page of a magazine or book, you will find a copyright number and date. “Copyright law is a federal law found in the Copyright Act [17 U.S.C. 101-1205] that protects the authors from copyright infringement for original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression [17 U.S.C. Sec 40 (d)]”. (Cyber Law, Ch4 85) It also says that, accor