Port 21 (Distribution and Promotion Remix) Brian Geoghagan Winter 2005 COM546 Professor Gill
Dec 20, 2015
Back In The Day (c.1995)
Pre-Broadband Hard Drive space appx. $1 per megabyte MP3 encoder and player released June ‘95 by The
Fraunhofer Society 3min Uncompressed = 90min 3min Compressed (MP3) = 9min
1999
$0.17 per MB (20GB = $300) Broadband rapidly spreading Increased Internet usage Winamp MP3 player Increased acceptance of MP3
technology
Legal Debate
R.I.A.A. vs. Napster (December 1999) Contributory Infringement – knowingly encouraging infringing activity. Vicarious Infringement – violation occurs when operator has the ability to
supervise users, but chooses not to for financial benefit.
Metallica/Dr. Dre vs. Napster (April 2000)
Napster’s Defense
Fair use Sampling Space Shifting Permissive Distribution
Non-Commercial & Non-Profit Use Does not copy, record, encode or transfer MP3 files American Home Recording Act (AHRA)
Allows recording copyright protected material for personal use
The Settlement
Mutually beneficial 300,000 users banned from Napster Temporary injunction shuts down Napster Napster not solely reliable for copyright material on
servers Shared liability with Artists/labels Must notify Napster of copyright protected files 36hrs to remove files
R.I.A.A. vs Napster
AHRA not applicable because computer is not recording device Religious Technology Center versus Netcom On-Line
Communication Services. ISP responsible for copyright infringement if they know of
infringement and have the ability to remove the protected material
Sony v. Universal Legal use of VCR trumps illegal use Sony cannot control what consumers use the VCR for in
their homes, therefore not liable for any copyright infringement
Time-shifting constitutes Fair Use
Decision
regardless of the number of Napster’s infringing versus non-infringing uses…plaintiffs would likely prevail in establishing that Napster knew or had reason to know of its users’ infringement of plaintiffs’ copyrights
File sharing harms copyright holders ability to make money from the same material.
File sharing is commercial use because users get something for free they would have had to pay for.
Further Studies
Didn’t factor increase in video game & DVD sales
Fewer major releases Felix Oberholzer and Koleman Strumpf
Tracked Downloads from file sharing networks and RecordScan sales during 2002 and found file sharing had an impact “indistiguishable from zero”
File sharing results in net-increase in music consumption Lower cost increases audience size Magnitude of file sharing increases social welfare
Future
Success of iTunes Music Store and portable MP3 players clearly shows room for growth in digital download market
SoulSeek and other P2P Networks New modes of sharing
MP3 Blogs BitTorrent Web based file sharing services
(yousendit.com, rapidshare.de) Hype Machine reports 400 sales
through iTunes and Amazon in October.
QuickTime™ and aGIF decompressor
are needed to see this picture.