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Napster Case: IP Control & Impact

The Napster case involved a legal battle between record labels and the music sharing platform Napster over copyright infringement. While artists create intellectual property, the legal system generally sided with record labels and distributors in determining control over distribution rights. Though similar services replaced Napster, its existence could not be defended because it was unable to comply with copyright laws and proved unprofitable due to litigation costs. Napster's success was attributed to its free music downloads, user-friendly interface, large collection of music, and peer-to-peer system empowering users. Other companies can learn from providing easily accessible content that users enjoy sharing through peer networks.

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69 views2 pages

Napster Case: IP Control & Impact

The Napster case involved a legal battle between record labels and the music sharing platform Napster over copyright infringement. While artists create intellectual property, the legal system generally sided with record labels and distributors in determining control over distribution rights. Though similar services replaced Napster, its existence could not be defended because it was unable to comply with copyright laws and proved unprofitable due to litigation costs. Napster's success was attributed to its free music downloads, user-friendly interface, large collection of music, and peer-to-peer system empowering users. Other companies can learn from providing easily accessible content that users enjoy sharing through peer networks.

Uploaded by

prasenkar
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Napster Case

Question 1. Based on the facts in the Napster case, who do you think should
have control over intellectual property—the artists or distributors of their
works? How did the legal system answer this question?
The distributors should be having the control over intellectual property as it is clear
from the case. If there is an infringement of copyright issue or any other issue which needs
to be sorted out legally it needs a lot of money and power to fight out these cases and win.
Individually the artist may not be able to manage the kind of legal hurdles and it will be an
unnecessary waste of time for him when he can concentrate on his work instead of running
around courts. The distribution companies can take care of these issues as they are
organisations with a lot of money and power at their disposal and then compensate the
artists accordingly.

Coming to the second part of the question we can observe that the legal battle was
fought by RIAA all through and Metallica band files some suits but there is no clarity in the
case to arrive at an answer. The legal system in most of the cases gave a judgement always
in the favour of Distributors.

Question 2.Can Napster’s existence be defended on the basis of the idea that
other online music services will take its place if it is forced to shut down?
The idea that other online music services will take place if Napster is shutdown is very much
true as two similar P2P networks gnutella and freenet sprung up during the time with a
similar system in place as that of Napster.

(Source : http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-243641.html )

But the existence of Napster cannot be defended by the above idea as ultimately Napster
had to shut down because it was not able to defend itself in the courts. That means it is not
following a certain set of norms laid down by the law of the land. It has failed on two fronts.
Number one the ethical front. The case mentions the fact that it was in deep debt at the
time of its bankruptcy.This has got to do with the litigation costs it had to bear. So the
second point is by the time it shut down operations Napster was not even a profitable
business.

So Napster’s existence cannot be defended based on the above two observations from the
case details.
Question 3. While there are many legal issues in this case, identify the
characteristics of Napster’s service that made it so successful. What can other
dotcoms learn from Napster’s success?
The information given in the case doesn’t really explain what were the factors that made
Napster’s service successful. I tried to find more information about the case and found out
the following characteristics.(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster)

 The free download option


 User Friendly Interface
 An eclectic, rare collection
 Was a system which was based on Users.

The learnings for other dotcoms could be having an easy to use interface and peer to peer
networking based dotcoms will become a huge success if the users cherish and enjoy the
content, in this case music, so that they keep coming back for more.

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