IS SHARING FILES ON THE INTERNET A CRIME IF THE FILES ARE COPYRIGHTED?

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IS SHARING FILES ON THE INTERNET A CRIME IF THE FILES ARE COPYRIGHTED?

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November 4, 00

Is sharing files on the Internet a crime if the files are copyrighted? This can be answered by many different people and in many different ways. The real answer that the record companies want to hear is that it is illegal and anyone doing it should be put in jail for stealing. They say that downloading something that is copyrighted off the Internet or from another person's computer and using the file without paying for it is just the same as going in to your local Best Buy and taking a CD off of the shelf and running out the door with it. That is a really hard way to look at what is happening, because almost all of the people downloading music, videos, and other files for free would never take something off of a shelf, stick them under there shirt and leave the store without paying for it. Most of the time when these kinds of things happen, it is because the file is free and would be nice to have, not that the person downloading it would really go out and take the product from an actual store.

Let us began with how this all became a problem. It all started back about three years ago with the Napster website and all of Napster's copy programs. Napster was nothing more than a well-built, peer-to-peer program that gained popularity by becoming a big news story. There was nothing illegal going on with the actual Napster program, but what the people who were using Napster were committing a federal offence. They were sharing music files with each other that were copyrighted. This never would have been a problem if the news had not gotten involved. Once the media got involved, people who did not even know what an MP file was had to have Napster just to be in on the "free music click". This large involvement of people brought this harmless crime to a new level.

This can be explained better if you know what a peer-to-peer (PP) program is and know how it works. Peer-to-peer is nothing more than my computer connected to yours. It allows anyone running the same peer-to-peer share program access to anything I have the program set to share. This could be one folder with one file or a whole hard drive with all access to all the files. Each user gets to pick. There is nothing illegal about that. If I wanted to share some home movies with my grandmother I could set them to be shared with her, and only her, and tell her what the name of the file was and the program would locate the file and share it with her. This is nice because most of these programs that share files do not slow your computer down as much as emailing the files, and the program allows you the option to stop downloading a certain file and pick back up at another time. The draw back to this is that both the person that has the file and the person that is obtaining the file have to be on the Internet at the same time. This is different than email where the sender has to upload the file to a server and the receiver can download it at some time in the future. The email process takes twice as long as just sending the file directly to the other computer. This is the main draw back to emailing files. Where transferring files becomes illegal is when the things being transferred are copyrighted.

Peer to peer also has an index where every file is saved under a number. Some programs have numbers that contain over one thousand characters. These numbers are searched when a word search is performed and everyone with a file that shares that number is located and shown as an availability level. This comes in handy for downloading multiple files or downloading the same file from different computers. This is faster than trying to download a file from a single source.

Napster was nothing more than a scapegoat for the record companies because there are dozens of other Napster look a likes that can be found at www.Download.com. Some include Kaza, Morpus, Bare Share, WinMX, and plenty more if you want to look. These programs are so popular that in August of 00, the Internet search word "MP" passed the word "sex" as the most searched word on the Internet.

So was Napster really guilty of a crime? No, no more than people who sell blank cassette tapes and blank videotapes. Everybody has a blank tape that has a CD recorded on it that their friend let them borrow. So, if Napster is illegal, why not prohibit all the other peer-to-peer programs? Because no one can control what people do while using a program and no one can prove the intended use of the program. The people who wrote other peer-to-peer programs, like the Tennessee based Morpus, have no control over what people using the program do, so how can they be held accountable for what is shared? It would be impossible to scan every file that is shared for copyrighted content because a copyrighted file can be changed a slight bit, and therefore, would not be recognized as a copyrighted file.

The reason for this all coming along was because of the simple fact that music albums are over priced. The average price of a CD is somewhere between $15 and $0 dollars. Many feel that is a little bit much to pay for something that most likely will only have three songs on it that to which you will like and listen. So the record company says that they are loosing billions on billons of dollars every day to this peer-to-peer file sharing. That is nice for them to think, but in all reality they are not losing half of that. Many people download songs or TV episodes, enjoy watching or listening to them, and then go out and purchase the full version at the store. On a personal note, it is nice to know it I miss a episode of a TV show I like or see a music video I like, that I can then down load it and play it on my computer. That is the same thing as recording it off the TV or the radio. It is not illegal to record a show off the TV or radio so why is it illegal to share music or TV files on one's computer? The reality is that the record companies will never be able to stop all the Napster-like programs, because there is too much that is left for users to do that is completely legal.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Courtney, Will. The Eagle Tribune (August 1, 001). Napster knockoffs. Found at http//eagletribune.com/news/stories/001081/LI_001.htm.

vonLohmann, Fred. Legal Media.net (November , 00). Peer to peer file sharing The napster aftermath. Found http//www.legamedia.net/legapractice/von-lohmann_fred/00/0-0/00_von-lohmann_fred_napster-pp_01.php.

Funderburk, Emily. The Diamondback Online (April 16, 00). On campus, Phynd can't be phound. Found at http//www.inform.umd.edu/News/Diamondback/archives/00/04/16/news5.html.

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