'The Controversy Of Napster'

If you have ever set out on your computer to purchase or play music off of sites like iTunes or Spotify, you know how simple it is to download your own music files, as well as share them at just the click of a button. Before these simple sites, music felt almost impossible to get. This issue inspired an 18-year old boy named Shawn Fanning to start a revolutionary company in 1999 called Napster. Let’s just say, Napster blew the rest of the sound and music industry out of the water. Shawn Fanning spent over 60 hours on his computer in order to unlock his idea in the future of file sharing. He wanted to make an accessible and easy way for people to share their love of music at the click of their cursor. According to “A Brief History of Napster”

They were very apprehensive about the whole entity because Napster created such an easy way to share music with each other instead of potentially purchasing it from a company. According to “The Napster Controversy” article by the IBS center for Management Research, “Analysts claimed that the real problem here was the fact that music, words, ideas - all intellectual property - were somehow not deemed worthy of protection as 'real' things such as diamonds were. According to a report,3 even the people who created the intellectual property might not really appreciate the ethical aspects of the issue because deep down they could be thrilled that someone else liked their work so much as to steal it. However, it can not be denied that all artists would prefer to be paid for their creations”( IBS center for Management Research ). Overall, other music companies did not want and were in fear of Napster stealing their produced music, which they considered their own property. They feared customers were going to leave their subscribed music sites because they would rather listen to stolen objects for free rather than purchase the real copy out of their own pocket. Some of these companies included The Recording Industry Association of America, who “filed a suit against Napster charging them with tributary copyright infringement, which means Napster is being accused not of violating copyright itself but of contributing to and facilitating other people's infringement. However, Napster argues that because the actual files are never in Napster's possession, but transferred from user to user, that Napster is not acting illegally”( The Napster Action Network ). Another company called P2P Applications had a conflict with this file because, “if Napster is guilty of copyright infringement, then the consumers of Napster are guilty too”( The Napster Action Network ). The problems with businesses against