Speak Up! - View Question #397

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Does Napster have the right to sell artist's songs for free on their website?

The answer to your question, for now, is that it hasn't been decided yet. Our laws in the United States are shaped by the rulings of our courts, which means that when a new situation arises we sometimes don't know the answer until a court addresses it. The case of Napster is going through our court system right now and the impact of the decision in the Napster case may have a major impact on the way that you buy, copy and trade music in the future.

To start with, copyrights are federal laws that protect artists who create new works, like songs, films, or books (see United States Code Title 17 sec. 101 and seq.). A copyright allows an author to create something new and sell it to make money. The copyright laws protect the author by making it illegal for someone else to copy and sell their original work without paying the artist something called a 'royalty' or at a minimum getting their permission to copy it.

In order for you to violate copyright laws, you must actually make a copy of a protected work. This means that it is not a violation of copyright law to lend someone your new CD to listen to, because you have purchased the CD and, as long as you don't make a copy, you're free to let someone else use your copy as you like.

The problem with Napster is that the technology allows you to 'share' your copy of CDs with many other people. Your CD is stored on your own computer's hard drive and other people are able to come in and share it. If no one made copies of these shared files, there would probably be no problem. But, of course, people make copies of the files they download, which becomes a violation of copyright laws. After Napster became a popular way to share music, the nine major record companies sued Napster to stop this activity.

The federal courts in California are currently trying to decide whether Napster's technology violates copyright laws. The case is called A&M Records, Inc. vs. Napster, Inc. (114 F. Supp. 2d 896 (N.D. Cal 2000)). At this point, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has held that Napster does violate the copyright laws, by giving people the ability to copy copyrighted works.

For now, Napster has been ordered to stop letting people copy music. We can't say yet which way the Supreme Court of the United States might rule on this issue, so we'll have to wait and see.

You can read the last ruling in the case at http://dl.napster.com/010212-opinion.pdf .

The Napster web-site is a good source of news about the case (http://www.napster.com/pressroom/legal.html).