Illegally copying and distributing copyrighted material is against the law. This law is widely known, but rarely enforced. However, in recent months an Internet program called Napster has come under fire for aiding in the illegal distribution of music. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), representing 18 record labels, has sued this California-based company for copyright violations. The controversy surrounding Napster is that the program itself does not illegally distribute copyrighted music. The people who use the program are the ones responsible for this illegal distribution. Another problem facing Napster is that universities around the country are beginning to block the program because it takes up too much bandwidth. Despite these problems Napster continues to go strong, adding new users every day. What will be the future of this hot new company?

Napster is the nickname of its creator, 19-year-old Shawn Fanning. Fanning wrote the program and obtained a large cash donation from a family friend. This donation allowed him to quit college and move from Harwich, Massachusetts, to San Mateo, California, to start a company with two of his friends. That w

the MP3 file format nor the Napster software indicates whether

PLEASE NOTE: Napster, Inc. makes no representations or

Kover, Amy. "Who's afraid of this kid?." Fortune. 20 March 2000. 129-130. Electronic. Proquest.

over the Internet by copyright owners; however, Napster users

o be available for both searches and downloads over the Internet by anyone else who runs the program. At peak times, this network of Napster users can offer access to several hundred gigabytes of data, or hundreds of thousands of individual files (Cohen 41).

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Cohen, Warren. "Napster is rocking the music industry The popular Web site has powerful enemies." U.S. News & World Report. 6 March 2000. 41. Electronic. Proquest.

copyright law remains your responsibility (Napster).

Clearly, Napster is trying to clear itself of being held liable for what its users do. Secondly, Napster does not actually control any of the music its users share. In fact, the music never even passes through its website. Napster's strongest defense is that it just puts out software that caters to a certain file type. Richardson says, "We can't be responsible for our users. All we're doing is being an index for a certain kind of file format" (Cohen 41). Because of Napster, many artists who do not have a record contract, but are trying to build a fan base are able to get their music to thousands of people worldwide. According to Napster, their software is no more illegal than a VCR is. VCR's are sometimes used to copy rented movies. Technically, this aides in the illegal copying of movies, but you do not hear about anyone trying to ban VCR's. The lawsuit comes down to whether or not Napster is held liable for aiding in the illegal distribution of copyrighted music.

Thousands of MP3 files have been authorized for distribution

as a little over seven months ago. Today, Fanning and his company have become the talk of the Internet. The program runs on personal computers and allows a user to share his or her collection of MP3 files. MP3's are the Internet's most popular form of digital music. A song off of a CD can take anywhere from 60 to 70 megabytes of hard drive space on your computer. These files are way too large to transfer over the Internet. However, MP3'

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