napster

"As an artist, there are so many ways that we can be taken advantage of. To have yet one more way to stip an artist of making an honest living is just to much. That's why I sued." ( Levy, 51 )

There are many ways that an artist can be stripped of making an honest living, Napster, one

of the many 'Mp3' services online, is the latest. An Mp3 ( short for ISO-MPEG Audio Layer 3 ) is a digital

compression of a music or video file so it's easier to send to one another over the internet ( Levy, 51 ).

Napster is an online music source where you can search for a song and download it absolutely free, with just

The Napster program, created by 19 year-old college drop out Shawn Fanning, is the fastest

growing site in history. It recently passed the 25 million mark in less than a year since it was released

(Greenfeld, 62 ). His program allows you to download copyright music, and that's why he is being sued by a

number of corporations. Napster is being sued by RIAA ( the Recording Industry Association of America ),

record companies ( BMG, the holder of lables like: Arista, Bad Boy, RCA, LaFace ), and artists (

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Let's say an artist makes two dollars for

each cd sold, that would mean that there goes 50 million dollars thrown right into the air.

"I'm down for a parallel business even if it's parasitic. There are some people that I know personally,

that download albums off the internet and sell them to their friends, and that is where the line is crossed. It's a

case of stealing artists "intellectual property". Napster should a service where you pay a monthly fee, and

there are certain artists that abide to have their songs swapped on Napster.

Along with Napster, there are many other online Mp3 sites such as: Gnutella, FreeNet, Scour,

and Mp3.

Everyone knows that radio and network television are public domain. Most of all, Napster is depriving artists of what they do. It's as if music artists are working for

free because they are getting no money what so ever with this Napster case, and it's morally wrong. They think that it's alright to download

broadcast media from network television or radio on Napster. They would rather just download the whole album online,

then burn it on to a cd spending only three dollars for a burned cd instead of the seventeen dollars spent for

buying the actual album. You want to hear the performance so you decide to go to

Napster, search for it, and download it because you can't get the song anywhere else, but it's okay anyway

because that performance was on network television, public domain. You

are taking copyrighted music and selling it to other people.

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Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

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