Napster

12 Pages 2946 Words

Is trading digital music using Napster Online legal or copyright infringement? First, we must find out what Napster is and who created it. 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 all it is, 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. Many people have found out these files can be hard to find, leading the explorer to dead ends if a searcher doesn’t know where to go or doesn’t want to pay for them. But 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. Acc...