Legal Issues of Peer Networks and File Sharing

For the past decade, a new struggle over the rights of copyright holders has emerged along side the popularity of new� technological advances. This is particularly true in the case of the record and film companies in terms of peer to peer networks such as Napster and Kazaa.
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There are two basic issues that are involved in this struggle; first is the issue of the purchasers right to make private copies of the work that they have bought (ie: if you buy a cd do you have the right to copy that cd so that you have one for home and one for the office?) and second is the issue of file sharing (ie: you buy a DVD and share it through a peer to peer network such as WinMx so that other people may down load it). ���
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On the media industry side of issue, record companies as well as film and T.V. distribution companies claim that both file sharing as well as copying already purchased materials is a violation of their copyright protection. By violating this right the �consumer' deprives the copyright owner of revenue with their �bootleg' copies and files.���
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The reverse argument is one that has been used in debates both in and out of the court room. File sharing can be considered legal under the Audio Home Recording Act and/or fair use under copyright law. The basic elements of these laws were established in Universal City Studios, Inc. et al v. Sony Corporation of America. In this case the U.S. district court ruled� that recording copyrighted materials onto video cassettes was covered under fair use and thus perfectly legal.
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Another major law that comes into play on this issue is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was passed into law in 1998 and provides protection against file sharing and software piracy as well as outlines the punishments for those who infringes on these rights. This law has been one of the strongest tools for legal teams representing media companies in suits both against average people and buisness such as Napster.
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Perhaps the most famous court case concerning this issue is A&M Records v. Napster. Napster as we may all remember was the first peer to peer network designed for music and video sharing. In it's prime napster was extremely popular among high school and college students and allegedly deprived the music industry of millions if not billions of dollars worth of home audio revenue.
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In A&M Records v Napster The Ninth Circuit Court of appeals ruled that Napster had repeatedly committed copyright infringement on their system. The court ordered that both A&M Records and Napster would be responsible to root out A&M materials and once identified Napster must remove and bar such files from their network with in three buisness days.
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The importance of this decision is the validity it gave to the industry argument. in terms of economic consequences of Napster like systems. Laws such as the DMCA helps to prevent lost revenues in the recording industry and give them a true legal voice to protect their property. It has also lead to several thousand law suits by the industry against regular people such as high school students, their parents or guardians and College students.
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I think that in the case of A&M v. Napster the decision of the court was in fact fair. The reason being that the network was actually so popular that it was effecting music sales. If we look back to the 1979 Universal v. Sony case the court ruled in favor of sony and the vcr because it posed no major financial threat to the film companies, and the vcr industry had potential to provide major revenue for US manufacturers. If we apply this to Napster it's clear that although we all like getting something for nothing its clear that the ruling was right. Napster did effect music industry revenue, free peer to peer networks made money only from banners and ads (revenue which could have been made with a charge network which pays royalties to the music companies).
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In conclusion, the issue is still in major debate. As music and video downloading become more mainstream with the new pay service Napster and itune the music industry is beginning to cash in on the mp3 boom. There are still peer to peer networks like Kazaa, winmx, and Limewire which are popular among college kids and teens, but less so than when it began because of new law suits and easier, legal access to music files.