Napster Is Taking Over

In today’s world, music is a core part of being a college student. You see proof of this on a daily basis by the thumping bass from your neighbor’s room or the headphones visible from an MP3 player on students while walking to class. But where are all of these students getting all this music from? Another core part of being a college student is being continuously broke. With CDs costing upwards of ten dollars for as little as eight tracks of music, it’s commonsense that college students would make up a large percentage of illegal downloader’s. As a result of the massive use of free peer to peer programs the record industry has suffered greatly. They are working hard in trying hard to put a stop to it, but they can’t do it alone.

Shawn Fanning brought the first example of illegal downloading to us in the summer of 1999 (Abbott 2003). Fanning provided the public with downloadable tracks of music using a program known as Napster. At its prime, there were over 80 million registered users downloading from Napster (Lam 2001). Only 6 months after operation, the RIAA (the Recording Industry Association of America) filed a lawsuit against Shawn Fanning and Napster for $100,000 per each downloaded song. The legal problem with Napster was that downloaders were not paying the due royalties to the artist and producers. Napster and its contemporary, Audiogalaxy, were not exact forms of shareware, so the RIAA was able to sue them as companies. The people who were actually doing the downloading got off scotch-free with thousands of free downloaded music tracks. As a result of the case Napster was shut down. Today we are introduced to subsequent forms of downloading, like KaZaA,Bearshare, and limewire would create a whole new kind of trouble for individuals getting free music.

KaZaA is not a centralized company; therefore it cannot be shut down (Abbott 2003). Because of this the RIAA turned to targeting the users downloading the music. Thousands of cases have been filed against “music pirates” and in many cases the criminals are college students such as you or me. In fact, college students are one of the prime targets of the RIAA but has nailed one of the most prolific file-traders in the U.S., filing a lawsuit against 12-year-old Brianna LaHara.

When not at the playground with her friends, "Biggie Brianna" is trading music files from her home in New York. The little girl received one of the 261 lawsuits filed by the RIAA She may look like a sweet and innocent child, but the RIAA says it's only going after major copyright violators at the moment. So you make the call. Peer-to-peer file sharing advocates received a boost in their ongoing battle against music industry executives when Jupiter Media Metrix released a study indicating that Internet file-sharing traffic volume actually increases music sales.

The research firm found that 34 percent of all peer-to-peer file-sharing users said they dole out more money for music than before they started swapping tunes online, although 15 percent of file swappers admitted to purchasing less music.

About 50 percent of respondents said they spend the same amount of money as they did before they started using such services as Kazaa , Morpheus, Gnutella and Madster.

In contrast, the study found that only 19 percent of respondents who do not use file-sharing services said they now spend more money on music, while 10 percent said they spend less. A majority -- 71 percent -- said their spending habits have not changed.

The report also noted that broadband Internet access via cable modems and DSL (digital subscriber line) services, along with the proliferation of recordable CD drives, have not impacted consumer music spending to a great degree.

Aram Sinnreich, a Jupiter analyst and the report's author, told news sources that the Internet is one of the best things that could have happened to the music industry. Instead of trying to fight file trading, he said, the industry should focus on making money from it.

Slowly but surely the music industry seems to be losing its grip on its most precious asset as illegitimate online services continue to attract millions of its consumers.

Music is now not just a packaged commodity to be bought with well-earned pocket money on a Saturday morning, but a 24-hour service, available free from hundreds of online sources at the touch of a mouse,

Even with the threat of a law suit, more shareware programs have emerged, at least until Apple provided a solution, a legal solution. In 2003 Apple released its own music program, iTunes. iTunes provides users with the opportunity to store their music and buy tracks for $0.99 each. Since its launch, iTunes has been wildly popular and successful and has spawned other legal downloading companies. Napster re-emerged