Napster: Company Meltdown
A nineteen-year-old entrepreneur, named Shawn Fanning, created Napster in 1999 as an elaborate plan to download music better from the Internet. Since its creation, Napster has caught on in the cyber world like wildfire. Ask any college student if he or she has heard of this company and you will hear a resounding "YES!". Napster is a music file (MP3) downloader for the Internet that allows users to find other users MP3's and downloads them directly from the other user's computer. Since college is unofficially very music oriented many college students love this program for its capability to download free popular music off of the net. The future of Napster, though, is undecided. In the past three months Napster has been under unbelievable crossfire from the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) because of the services that they offer to their online customers. The RIAA contends that Napster's "online-sharing" compares to mass copyright infringement. This would basically mean that Napster is illegally aiding users in the unlawful "stealing" of music profits from artists. "To the music industry downloading a song via Napster is akin to stealing a record from a music store. But fans say they're
simply sampling new music, as they would at an in-store listening station"(qted. Graham). Artists and the RIAA both argue that this unlawful practice is causing CD sales to drop and then in turn causing the record companies and the artists to lose money. The RIAA has even done studies that supposedly prove that record sales have went down as a result of Napster coming into existence. Recently the RIAA even sued Napster with the intent to get it shut down. They won the trial, but as of right now Napster will be allowed to operate during the appeals process. In closing, the Internet company Napster isn't really hurting anybody. The music industry is still very well off compared to the rest of society. We have homeless on the streets and the artists are worried about losing money when they are already millionaires. How sad is that? So I ask the question, what's wrong with getting music free? When we still pay your outrageous ticket prices as well as pay an arm and a leg for your official merchandise, you still want more of our hard-earned money. I hope Napster gets through this, so everyone can listen to what they want, when they want to without fear of getting sued for copyright infringement. I also agree with Napster on the fact that most of Napster's users do exercise the preview before you buy concept. I know I personally have bought at least ten CD's after I had first previewed them in
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 944
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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