Case Analysis: Napster
In 1999, Shawn Fanning, a college dropout changed the music industry by his phenomenal peer-to-peer file sharing program called Napster. The program allows computer users to share and swap files, specifically music through a central server.
The program spread out quickly after it had launched. By October 2000, the site was growing by a million users a week, with some 800,000 logged on at any one time. Napster was so attractive obviously because it allowed users could download music for free, and users didn’t have to go to the store for newest songs.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed suit against Napster charging them with copyright infringement, which means Napster is being accused not of violating copyrights itself but of contributing to and facilitating other people’s infringement. However, Napster argued that the files were transferred from user to user, that Napster is not acting illegally. The issue in Peer to Peer applications is that if Napster is guilty of copyright infringement, then the consumers of Napster are guilty too.
Now this small company is up against media empires like Universal, Sony and BMG, plus the influential artist Metallica. The court battles continue and Napster’s future hangs in the balance. Regardless of the outcome in the courtroom, Napster led to the producing of second generation peer to peer net works in the industry such as Kazaa, Grokster, Morpheus, and itunes.
The peer to peer file sharing program is a great idea but that Fanning’s mistake was not having developed a complementary system for the protection of intellectual property rights and combing the two.
Fanning hired Eileen Richardson a ...