Napster, the popular MP3 provider among students at the University and across the nation, has come under fire once again.
On April 13, Metallica and other music artists filed a lawsuit against Napster and the University of Southern California, Yale University and Indiana University, which all allow their students access to the MP3 provider. The suit alleges that the company promotes piracy by allowing users to trade copyrighted songs at no cost.
Users can download songs from the Napster Internet site encoded in the popular MP3 format directly from their computers.
The suit against Yale was dropped when the university agreed to ban its students from access to the browser until legal issues have been resolved.
Some universities across the nation, including Oregon State, banned access to Napster earlier this year because the browser was taking up too much computer bandwidth, not for piracy issues. More than just an MP3 provider, Napster is an integrated browser and communications system that allows users to download music for free at the click of a mouse.
Paul Anthony, CEO and founder of Rumblefish Records, a Eugene digital record company, said the use of Napster has become popular among students, but users do not understand that they are hurting their favorite artists when they download their tunes for free.
“Napster is pretty detrimental to the [advancement] of the digital record industry,” Anthony said. “People need to understand that if you steal music from artists that you really, really love, you’re hurting them. I love Lenny Kravitz, but I wouldn’t on my worst day go to Napster and steal his songs.”
The fear that fans are obtaining too many free copies of songs on-line is exactly what led Metallica and its labels E/M Ventures and Creeping Death Music to team up with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Rap artist Dr. Dre threatened similar legal action Friday for copyright infringement if Napster did not remove his songs from the site.
For now, however, Napster will remain accessible to University students looking for a quick and easy way to download music.
Maureen Shine, deputy director of communications at the University, said the University is aware of the controversy surrounding Napster and the Computing Center is keeping an eye on any new developments.
“It’s just an issue that we are watching at this point,” Shine said.
Joanne Hugi, director of the Computing Center, said her staff is observing the situation, but to this point no action has been necessary.
Students interviewed about their Napster involvement declined to go on the record for fear of legal trouble.
Hugi said she hopes that any recording artist concerned with possible copyright infringements would approach the University before taking legal action.
“If somebody brought to our attention a breach of copyright law, we would deal with that,” she said.
She added that if the University banned Napster, it is not clear how it would be done. She explained that Napster was a “moving target” and difficult to ban access to.
Anthony and Hugi said that the problem with Napster is only the tip of the iceberg. A number of emerging companies are similar to Napster, and that’s why Anthony thinks it could make more sense to sue the users of Napster rather than the company itself.
“That’s the kind of thing that needs to happen for people to know that they can’t take our music,” Anthony said.
In fact, this has already begun in the case of a student who was recently convicted of violating the No Electronic Theft Act. The NET Act covers criminal copyright infringement and aims to include gray areas in past copyright acts that provided a niche for Napster and similar companies.
Napster does ask its users to abide by copyright laws. The company’s terms of use states: “Napster respects copyright law and expects our users to do the same … As a condition to your account with Napster, you agree that you will not use Napster’s service to infringe the intellectual property rights of others in any way.”
To Anthony, however, those conditions do not excuse that Napster provides MP3 formatted music in the first place. He said that this compares to providing alcohol to minors and then telling them it’s illegal to consume it.
Anthony said he understands that fans just want to get their favorite songs, even though they don’t realize the harm they might cause by downloading it at no cost.
“People don’t know what they’re doing,” Anthony said. “People just love the music.”