Beyond Napster.
The music industry spent tons of money this summer trying to shut down Napster An online music store from Napster, LLC, New York (www.napster.com) that lets you download copyrighted titles for a fee. In October 2003, the Napster site went live again after being dormant for many months. , the main service people use to copy tunes from the Web without paying. But even if record companies win this battle, they may lose the war. Other types of software have already made the copying of entertainment much easier and the tracing of copiers far harder. Thanks to relatively new computer networks like Freenet Freenet - Community-based bulletin board system with e-mail, information services, interactive communications, and conferencing. Freenets are funded and operated by individuals and volunteers - in one sense, like public television. and Gnutella A popular peer-to-peer file sharing network on the Internet. Gnutella lets users share files from user machine to user machine without the use of a central directory, which was the original Napster architecture. , everything from video games See video game console. to Scientology texts is being traded freely. And other networks, such as MojoNation and COLAVision, are on the way. Most users, meanwhile, have no ethical qualms about illegal copying. In an e-mail to the judge in the Napster case, one 14-year-old wrote, "I don't find it to be damaging to any musicians. I actually think it is helping them."
COPYRIGHT 2000 Scholastic, Inc.
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 2000, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.
|
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion