It is a vast network of millions of users, surfing and sharing billions of files, all day, every day. This scares many copyright holders out of their minds. After all, there is virtually no one to protect these copyright holders from the misuse of their intellectual property – certainly not the dinosaur that is our government. But, as Scott Sullivan, writer for The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin stated, “as history has proven, freedom and technological and societal advances usually come with a price.” The price society is paying for the Internet is a loss of copyright protection by laws for their intellectual material.Take Napster for instance. It is a simple program created by a young college student named Shawn Fanning that enables users to anonymously swap and share audio files known as MP3s. When it first came into existence, it only had 3,000 or so users. However, according to Chris Sherman, writer for the magazine Online, says “Napster has become the most successful new Web technology ever, gaining more than 25 million registered users in just over a year or existence.”At the beginning of its life, Napster could probably have easily been protected by the Audio Home Recording Act, “which gives consumers the right to create and transfer digital music for noncommercial purposes.” (Sherman) At this point, however, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) begs to differ. They believe “the fact that millions of users can share songs with one another is an egregious violation of copyright and constitutes outright ‘theft’ of intellectual property.” (Sherman) They have won a lawsuit under this argument against Napster in early 2001, so the program may go offline unless a compromise is reached.Unfortunately, it’s a fairly simple job to shut down Napster permanently because of its centralized service. However “file sharing, a mainstay of Web...
