Re: Napster destroys Western Civilization

On 5/4/2000, James Rogers <jetan[_at_]ionet.net> wrote in an "airy-fairy philosophical question":
>
> I am of the opinion that Napster represents a very clear violation
> of the copyright statute.

Can we be so sure of this? According to a 20 March 2000 article in Fortune Magazine by Amy Kover (available through Fortune's web site):

> ...
> two intellectual property lawyers say the law favors Napster. For one
> thing Napster doesn't actually control any of the music -- it never
> even passes through the Website. "Napster is saying, 'We just put
> software out there,' "says John Lynch of Howrey Simon Arnold & White.
> "So the plaintiff has to prove Napster is inducing illegal activity.
> And inducing is not what they're really doing."
>
> What's more, the RIAA will have to prove that Napster is used almost
> exclusively for illegal activity, argues Mark Lemley, a law professor
> at University of California at Berkeley. That will be difficult
> because Napster provides access to new, uncopyrighted artists as well.
> The company says it plans to allow other items, such as photos, to be
> sent using its software too.

Even if Napster is not guilty of copyright law violations, the 5 to 6 million people who have downloaded Napster software may be the ones that are guilty. Yet that would seem to me to be evidence that a sizeable percentage of the population doesn't like the current balance in copyright. By their actions they seem to be rewriting copyright law so that their grant of a limited monopoly to the creators of music does not prohibit the public's ability to distribute freely copies of recordings for personal use.

In short, while the IP industry may own Congress and the law, the public, through Napster, IMesh, Gnutella, etc., owns the technology that can make the law irrelevant. From the public's perspective, the only harm that would arise from their use of Napster would occur if Metallica decided to stop making music. Until that happens, why shouldn't a right to make and distribute non-commercial copies of copyrighted materials be a part of the public's grant of limited monopoly that copyright represents?

Is that airy-fairy philosophical enough? :-)

Peter B. Hirtle
pbh6[_at_]cornell.edu Received on Fri May 05 2000 - 13:05:46 GMT