Napster touched off a revolution in computing – the creation of peer-to-peer file sharing. And the ethical implications of this new paradigm are still being hammered out to this day.
Created by 19-year-old Shawn Fanning, Napster polished and popularized the idea of “peer-to-peer,” or P2P, sharing. As opposed to traditional file sharing models (for instance, downloading files from a central FTP or web site), P2P did away with the centralized location of the files, and allowed individuals to share with one another through a huge network.
The Napster program was the intermediary – when someone requested a file, Napster would search its network to find someone who had that file to share. The transfer was then initiated between the two individuals.
Napster in and of itself was merely a vehicle for transferring files. When paired with the MP3 format, which makes digital files of songs small enough to download, it became a pop culture sensation. Millions of people – particularly college students, who had access to high-speed internet connections at their schools – began accumulating huge stockpiles of digital music, music that they had not purchased.
Just a few months after Napster’s popularity began to soar, a lawsuit from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) began the lengthy process that would eventually lead to its bankruptcy. But the revolution that Napster started continues to this day, as a host of other P2P file sharing platforms continue to be used around the world, every minute of every day.
Who Owns What?
Central to the problem of P2P file sharing is the notion of ownership of digital material. After all, a P2P system like Napster is nothing more than a conduit – it is the tool by which files get disseminated and distributed.
In fact, P2P systems have legitimate uses in the business community. For instance, companies with large volumes of electronic documents might use internal P2P file sharing to allow workers to find the ones they need.
But it is the MP3 file that lit the P2P craze, and that is where the controversy stands. As high-bandwidth connections become available to more and more people, the P2P issue will move beyond just music and into films, television shows, digital video, and more.
The key legal distinction at the heart of the matter is the concept of licensing. Digital media, such as movies, music, or audio books, are not “sold” in the conventional sense – instead, they are licensed.
Let’s take a comparative example: if you purchase a shovel, you are buying that shovel. You now own the shovel, and can do anything with it that you want. But if you buy a CD of music, you do not own the music – you own a license, which roughly means that you have purchased the right to listen to the music.
Many users of online music sharing systems are under the mistaken impression that because they purchased a CD, they own the digital information stored on it. They do not; the ownership of the music itself – the actual 1s and 0s on the CD that make up the music – remains in the hands of the artist or, more likely, the record label.
An important distinction should be made here: there are countless bands, most of them not signed to a record label, that want their music copied and distributed as much as possible. Many artists have used P2P networks as a free way to spread their work around the world, generating publicity. Sites like mp3.com make this easy for artists.
What About the Mix Tape?
Fans of online music swapping make the point that this whole phenomenon is really nothing new, because music fans have been making “mix tapes” for friends and relatives for as long as the cassette deck has been in existence.
While this might be true, there is a major difference between cassette copies and digital copies: cassette copies of music always suffer some loss in quality, making them less than perfect. Each time the cassette is duplicated, the quality drops a little bit.
Digital copies, as with CDs, are perfect every time. What’s more, there is no “generational loss” of quality – meaning that you could copy a copy of a copy of a CD, and it will sound exactly like the original.
One parent related the story of a student at his daughter’s high school: the student was purchasing the latest releases on CD the day they were available in stores, buying boxes of cheap blank CDs, and making copies for his friends for $2 a piece. This is a clear cut example of outright theft – money that would have gone to the artist is instead going to another individual. This person is not merely behaving unethically, they are a criminal, and could end up fined or imprisoned if caught.
Fair Use
The Fair Use portion of the copyright laws confuse the issue somewhat, as people who are active in copying digital media will point to “fair use” as a justification for what they are doing.
“Fair Use” refers to a slightly nebulous idea that someone who purchases content in one form or another (a book, a music CD, a movie on videocassette, or a piece of computer software) should be able to make a copy for their own purposes. The boundaries of fair use are not firmly defined, and fair use has been used many times in arguments and lawsuits.
A good example of fair use is a computer game. When you purchase the game, you are purchasing the right to use that software on one computer at a time. If you use the software more than one place at a time – for instance, if you let a friend install the game on his computer – you are violating the license.
But under fair use, you are allowed to make one copy of the original CD, for backup purposes. This does not mean that the license is being changed in any way – the software can still only be used on one computer at a time. But you are legally entitled to a second copy, in case your original becomes damaged. The same protection extends to music CDs, movies, and other media.
grammy.aol.com Timeline of the history of Napster
www.afternapster.com A list of P2P sites and clients that have sprung up in the wake of Napster
MP3.com, a site filled with music files that are legal to download
