The incident that happened in 2001 between Napster and Rapper Dr Dre and rock group Metallica, made me think about the poor artists taht are affected by websites that enable the public to download free music.Before I get to all that, let me start at the begining....
What is Napster? (well I am proud to say that I am sticking to my "techno-learning challenge". Eversince I decided to educate myself about the internet, new media and technology as a whole, I've learnt lots of interesting things that I didin't know and I got to gain insight on things that I knew about but didn't really understand. take the Napster/Dr Dre /Metallica fiasco for instance. As a lover of music, I like to follow what is going on in the media industry, however, because I didn't know what napster was and hat it was about, I couldn't exactly follow the lawsuit). Napster was an online music file sharing service created by Shawn Fanning and operated between June 1999 and July 2001 while he was attending Northeastern University in Boston. This is before it was shutdown due to the Recording Industry Association of America, many copyright lawsuits and eventual bankruptcy.
The whole ordeal began when heavy Metal band Metallica discovered that a demo of their song "I disappeared" had been circulating across the napster network before they had released it. the band responded by filing a lawsuit against napster. A month later, rapper Dr Dre filed a similar lawsuit after napstrer wouldn't remove his work from their service. After that many other lawsuits came knocking on napster's door from record labels and many other recording companies. Amongst others, the most serious claims that were made against napster were:
1. that its users and napster were directly infringing the artists'/ company/'s copyright of the music
2. that napster was liable for vicarious infringement of their copyright.
The court found napster guilty. in 2001, napster finally declared itself bankrupt and sold its assests.
After a $2.43 million takeover offer by the Private Media Group, an adult entertainment company,Napster's brand and logos were acquired at bankruptcy auction by the company Roxio, Inc. which used them to rebrand the pressplay music service as Napster 2.0, which is an online music service offering a variety of purchase and subscription models. their main competitors are itunes and Apple Inc. Napster 2.0 is not a peer-to-peer service, but besides the name and logo this new version does contain some features (such as artist, album and song search) similar to those of the original Napster. This is a much better alternative, and it is a win-win situation beacuse the artist's rights are still protected and they don't lose any money from their hard work. however, there is now teh newly formed Napster free. which is exactly what it says it is in the name. It where people can download and listen to free music. I guess the saying remains.. "the more things change, the more they remain the same!!!"
5 comments:
I must really say that this Napster story is very interesting. I think that most people engage in piracy because they dont think that by coping one CD the artist in affected. They tend to say that these people have money so what is copying 1 or 2 CD's going to do to their bank account. Besides why buy a CD when you can have one for free or for half its selling price. Truth is downloading and copying CD's for free is very damaging to artists but in my opinion its not going to stop anytime soon. Im sure most of us have done and will continue doing it
well. i agree that this is very wrong and this is what is killing the music industry, everywhere.
yes the napster story is interesting and people like that should be convicted and put into jail so that it is a lesson to others not to that.
but copying cd's from the internet cannot be stopped it is hard to track people down from all over the world and yes i dont think it will stop anytime soon.
piracy of music is wrong as not only is the music industry being affected but also the musicians that make their living from music. the article by Napster is interesting and there should be measures taken to cut down on piracy and the culprits should be punished. with all the advancements in technology piracy is now even easier. through the internet people are now able to download music for fre and there are many sites that make this possible.
although downloading music of such sites is some what wrong many artists and bands are use this tecnology to their advantage to lauch their new stuff. an example of this is cold play, who recently offered their first single of their new cd for free downlow of their website for given period of time.
musicologyvirus.blogspot.com is very informative. The article is very professionally written. I enjoy reading musicologyvirus.blogspot.com every day.
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