As the Internet is coming more popular in today’s world, more and more people are introduced to different sites. Sites that share files, isn’t that what the Internet was intended to be in the first place. Well this issue has been introduced in court recently, due to the great amount of file-sharing, and not just any files, but music files. The company I am talking about is Napster. To give a brief explanation what Napster is, I have visited their homepage and browsed their information, and I have came to the conclusion that it is a massive file-sharing server. Napster allows it’s users to locate and share music files from each other’s computer. It also helps promote new artist by getting their music out to the Napster community. This allows the users to discuss what they like or dislike about the artist. Napster was introduced to the world in 1999, when 19 year-old from Boston’s Northeastern University wrote a code, which became known as the program Napster. Napster was first intended to aim its service to college students and then carry onto others.

In the article from the ZDNET UK News site entitled, “RIAA Sues MP3 Site Napster,” introduces the RIAA’s suit against Napster. They're charging Napster with copyright infringement. In another article found on the Sonicnet.com news site, talks about how the program, Napster, had a main goal to help spread the music of unknown artists, but the RIAA would disagree with this, they feel that Napster is stabbing the artist and record companies in the back. By stabbing in the back they mean that Napster is stealing money from them that they would get from consumers. But in a report that the RIAA surveyors did, they didn’t report the increase of records sales of 8% that following year. Instead, they reported that record sales have dropped within a ten-year span. The lowest it has ever been. But all this happened before Napster was around, and they didn’t included that either in their report. Information that I have found on the Napster site states, “The Napster community is about the love of music. Napster community members love must and purchase far more CDs than most people. They share files with no exception of gain.” Most Napster users will most likely listen to a song and if they like it, chances are they will go and buy the CD, and RIAA can’t say they are not promoting CD buying, cause if you are a user of Napster like I am, you would notice they have placed a link to cdnow.com to purchase CD’s that you like. So in turn they are helping to promote CD sales as well as new upcoming artists.

In the article by Dawn C. Chmielewski, she talks about how the music industry hates Napster because it can’t collect any royalties from them. I would have to agree with this statement, because when a user goes on and is sharing files they are doing this all for free. Napster on the other hand have made efforts to settle out of court, they have said that they are going to launch a subscription paying service instead of a free service, but this obviously hasn’t persuade the companies to settle.

Since RIAA has been suing Napster, Napster on the other hand is taking action to Congress. They are asking Congress to help them, stay up and running, by doing this Napster CEO Hank Barry is asking for a “compulsory license.” A compulsory license is an agreement that would allow Internet companies to run if they would agree to pay a fee set by Congress or the Library of Congress’s Copyright Office. The fee people pay would then be put into a royalty pool, which in turn is then paid to individual copyright holders. Without this kind of license Internet companies would have a hard time making it in the cyber world. The CEO pointed out that they use this kind of license in radio, but also cable and satellite television. Licenses should be available on the Internet as it is to the radio. Napster has said they would pay this free under this license.

Since Napster is being sued by RIAA, some artists have taken action against Napster too, like Dr. Dre and Metallica. Napster has told both artists that it is hard to remove the songs, but it is easier to remove users. But Napster wont remove a user, until the artist provides a list of usernames that are sharing their songs. Then Napster in return does ban the user from the service. Now Napster is trying to block copyrighted songs so they cannot be shared among users, but RIAA says that 84 percent of them are still being downloading free of charge by Napster. Napster in return have hired 15 more people to do the filtering of songs, which they hope to stop the sharing of unauthorized music. The main reason Napster has not shut the service down, was because it would violate the rights of artists on the site who have given Napster permission to share their music to the users. So what does the future hold for Napster? Well no one really knows, but if Napster is force to shut down, do the record industry believe that music sales will go up even more. Well I doubt it, but like I said before no one really knows what will happen.