ated) out of operation, the file sharing process cannot be performed. Napster appealed this injunction and the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals intervened when a few hours were left, saving the service from being shutdown.The proceedings are being held at this point. If the RIAA position upheld, the file sharing service will stop. Details of the proceedings can be found in several public sites (references 1 to 4).The problem from the optic of the common citizen:There is a legal problem now deciding whether Napster is violating copyright laws. This analysis will be heavily legal and probably political. However, for the lay average person, the problem is of basic principles. The question that people raises now days are in lines like: Is it acceptable to share any of some of the so-called copyrighted material in the Internet? If it is not acceptable today, should it be in the future?Is it acceptable to have the government overseeing the way people shares data over the Internet?Are the copyright laws up to today's technologies?Stopping technologies like pier-to-pier communications will affect some positive outcomes of its use?The issue is complex and goes beyond the purpose and extent of this paper. For this reason, I would like to focus my discussion on one of the basic arguments used against the right to share music files using the internet: Copying music files in the internet is not correct and is illegal because such files are copyrighted.Copying music files in the Internet is not correct and is illegal because such files are copyrighted:There are laws that protect copyrights. Basically we could say that the spirit of these laws (see ref # 3) is to prevent any reproduction of material if the use of this reproduction is going to generate, or help to generate a profit. If I make copies of a copyrighted CD and I go to the streets to sell it, or I just start to sell it over the Internet, I would be clearly generating a profit. In the c...
