The last eighteen or so months of news from the music industry have been filled with the controversy over a computer program called Napster. In case you've been living under a rock since 1998, a nineteen-year-old named Shawn Fanning launched the company of the same name. The program, which is downloaded off the Napster website (www.napster.com), allows users to "share" MP3's, which are digital music files. It breaks down like this: let's say that computer A has a song on its hard drive in MP3 format. Now, anytime computer A is logged on to Napster, computer B (or any other computer logged on) can download that song off of A's hard drive and on to its own. It's like that for all the computers logged on to Napster at any given time, which undoubtedly numbers in the millions. The program itself was written by Fanning while attending Northeastern University in January 1999, and it "took off so suddenly that he never got around to officially dropping out of school,!

Eliscu, Jenny. "Limp Bizkit Announce Napster Tour; Battle Over Trading Site heats Up." Rolling Stone. Jun. 2000

The Napster camp is pleading innocence, however, they claim shelter under the 1992 Home Audio Recording Act and the 1984 Sony Betamax case. They argue that "if Napster users aren't selling their pirated MP3's ..... then Napster, which has only been accused of contributing to infringement, hasn't done anything wrong." (Eliscu, "Napster" 2). They also state from the Betamax case that "new technologies should not be judicially banned (or re-engineered) unless the only substantial use of which they are capable is unlawful," (Fitzpatrick 1). When the movie industry sued Sony Betamax, it was ruled that it had many non-infringing uses, and likewise Napster contends that it has many legal uses as well, such as sampling and the distribution of un-copyrighted music.

This kind of "sharing" doesn't stop at music, however. In July a new website came on-line called Contentville.com, and it echoed Napster-like controversy, only this time it was with the written word. In the beginning, the website promised to bring high quality content to consumers on the web. That certainly sounds innocent enough, or at least it did to its supporters like CBS and NBC. Contentville.com was essentially a digital reprint website, and charged $2.95 per article. The website was selling articles and. like Napster, not paying any royalties to the authors. The creator, Steven Brill, claimed ignorance and the company declared "it [Contentville] legally obtained much of its material through one of its partners, Ebsco Publishing, which collects texts published in magazines and elsewhere and sells them as a database to libraries and, in this case, Contentville," (Mandel 2). Contentville was ordered to pay the writers 30% and gives them the option to remove their own!

Eliscu, Jenny. " Napster goes to Court," Rolling Stone. Aug. 2000

shaken the music industry to its very foundation, and for better or worse, it has also

Fitzpatrick, Eileen. "Napster Meister." Time. Nov. 2000

works from the site. This matter was resolved quickly because of a precedent set in July (just after Contentville started

Some common words found in the essay are:
BMG Middlehoff, Shawn Fanning, Publishers Association, Limp Bizkit, Sony Betamax, Postal Service, Forrester Research, Yorke Radiohead, Fred Durst, Eliscu Napster, limp bizkit, sony betamax, shawn fanning, record companies, music industry, mandel 2, violates copyright, future music, pay writers, rolling stone,
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