Napster Paved The Way

Almost everyday, we are faced with media piracy. Whether we illegally download music, copy CDs, burn DVDs, tape TV shows, or make copies of pictures from magazines, we are breaking the law. There are so many laws against it, yet we do it on a daily basis.

The most common type of piracy is downloading and coping music. For years, music companies have tried preventing with the latest music coping, but they continually fall short of keeping people from downloading.

The downloading craze began in 1999 when a college student, Shawn Fanning, created a way for music lovers to share music. The file-sharing network, known as Napster, was an instant success, yet controversy was soon to follow. Artists, such as Metallica and Dr. Dre, sued Napster for copyright infringement. Yet many other artists used Napster as a resource to boost their popularity. After numerous lawsuits, Napster officially shut down in 2001, after a court order to stop trading copyrighted music.

Napster paved the way for many other file-sharing networks. Downloading is illegal, but it is almost impossible for the government and music companies to stop it from taking place. The music industry continues to lose more and more money each year because of illegal downloading, but it is almost inevitable that file-sharing will become even more popular and technically advanced.

Another reason music companies lose money is due to CD coping. CD coping, also known as “burning”, has become widely common and very accessible. Almost every computer made today comes with a CD burner. Some would argue that burning is against the law, but others see nothing wrong with it. Those that see nothing wrong with it believe that once we purchase the CD, it is ours so we should be able to do what we like with it. Yet, what we fail to understand is that although we bought the CD, we still do not own the rights to the music. Therefore, any type of coping or downloading is illegal because we are essentially stealing the music. Although companies have tried so many different techniques to keep society from illegally downloading, as technology advances, it is almost impossible to keep it from happening.