Should unregulated distribution of copyrighted works over Internet be allowed?
Copyright is a form of legal protection provided to the authors of original works of authorship, whether books, music, film or other creative works. Its aim is to allow authors, musicians, directors, etc., (and the companies that back them and distribute their work) to profit from their creativity and so encourage them and others to produce other works in future. Basically copyright means that an author's work cannot be copied and distributed without their permission and without payment to them.
The Internet is described as the biggest threat to copyright since its beginning. The Internet is full of information, a lot of it under varying degrees of copyright protection. Downloading music, games, movies, software and other materials from the Internet without paying, and sharing these materials without proper permission is considered a violation of copyright laws.
The most notorious case of unregulated distribution of copyrighted works was Napster and the lawsuit that was filed against it at the end of 1999. Napster was set up by Shawn Fanning, then aged 18, as a website which provide its users with a way to share the songs stored on each other's computers. This peer-to-peer (P2P) service allowed Napster users access to a huge online library of music, but as much of this music was under copyright its free distribution through filesharing was deeply unpopular with the record companies who immediately sued.
In July 2001, a judge issued a ruling ordering Napster's servers to be shut down to prevent further copyright violations. Napster has siince then changed into a subscription system and has paid record companies to allow them to share the music in the future. Yet file sharing was not prevented by this action as other websites (e.g. Edonkey, KaZaA, Grokster) that offer similar services (but without some of Napster's legal vulnerabilities) emerged. In 2003 record companies in the United States decided that they would not file civil lawsuits against peer-to-peer services anymore but rather against individual computer users who engage in illegal filesharing. This has led to hundreds of people, typically students, being accused in court and sometimes heavily fined for their activities.
The arguments below focus mostly on sharing of music (MP3 files), as this kind of sharing is most common. Similar arguments could also be made for video files, books, software and other materials.
Copyright is a form of legal protection provided to the authors of original works of authorship, whether books, music, film or other creative works. Its aim is to allow authors, musicians, directors, etc., (and the companies that back them and distribute their work) to profit from their creativity and so encourage them and others to produce other works in future. Basically copyright means that an author's work cannot be copied and distributed without their permission and without payment to them.
The Internet is described as the biggest threat to copyright since its beginning. The Internet is full of information, a lot of it under varying degrees of copyright protection. Downloading music, games, movies, software and other materials from the Internet without paying, and sharing these materials without proper permission is considered a violation of copyright laws.
The most notorious case of unregulated distribution of copyrighted works was Napster and the lawsuit that was filed against it at the end of 1999. Napster was set up by Shawn Fanning, then aged 18, as a website which provide its users with a way to share the songs stored on each other's computers. This peer-to-peer (P2P) service allowed Napster users access to a huge online library of music, but as much of this music was under copyright its free distribution through filesharing was deeply unpopular with the record companies who immediately sued.
In July 2001, a judge issued a ruling ordering Napster's servers to be shut down to prevent further copyright violations. Napster has siince then changed into a subscription system and has paid record companies to allow them to share the music in the future. Yet file sharing was not prevented by this action as other websites (e.g. Edonkey, KaZaA, Grokster) that offer similar services (but without some of Napster's legal vulnerabilities) emerged. In 2003 record companies in the United States decided that they would not file civil lawsuits against peer-to-peer services anymore but rather against individual computer users who engage in illegal filesharing. This has led to hundreds of people, typically students, being accused in court and sometimes heavily fined for their activities.
The arguments below focus mostly on sharing of music (MP3 files), as this kind of sharing is most common. Similar arguments could also be made for video files, books, software and other materials.