The Evolution Of The Internet

The internet has revolutionized the modern world like no other invention has before, except perhaps, electricity. The internet allows sharing and collaboration to take place between people on opposite sides of the globe. Vinton G. Cerf, often called the “Father of the Internet”, admits that when the original idea of an “intranet” was in its infancy, there was no possible way to imagine all of the ways we would come to use it (NDTV, 2013).

The case of A&M Records Inc. v. Napster Inc., record companies brought infringement action against Napster for the unfair use of copyrighted work and harmed the potentiality of music within the market (239 F3d 1004, 2001). With the burgeoning of the internet age, musicians and artists were faced with the threat of in home piracy, via file sharing programs like Napster, or Grokster.

“We now have the ability to consume massive amounts of torrent or streams of music” due to its availability (Muller). People can simply go online and listen to their favorite artists for free with the click of a mouse. For example, global online audio distribution platforms such as SoundCloud, Pandora, and Spotify all boast a vastly enormous library of online music; furthermore, these platforms allow their users to listen to any song for free and construct their own music playlists that is unique for each user. Why bother buying a CD or an album when you can listen to the songs you want to at any time on your phone or your laptop?

In 1999, Shawn Fanning and his little program called Napster created quite a stir in society. Napster's software allows music listeners to open pieces of their personal hard drives to everyone using Napster, sharing whatever MP3 songs they have already downloaded or stored. At any time, thousands of people are online, sharing hundreds of thousands of songs, many of which are technically illegal to download without the permission of the copyright holders. [1] This led to a lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America, with the rock group Metallica as its frontman. In this case, several issues were brought up, one of which was the right of the creator of the music to control what happens with

This service it’s surly the most Music streaming Service used in the World with over 75 Million active user every month tea qui 15 million user pay the subscription every month. (Adam Shepherd, 2015) http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/leadership/5577/what-is-spotify ) Spotify was funded in April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon and it was Lunched in in September 2008 in Sweden. With over 30 million song available to play Spotify has an huge success thanks to the capability of create playlist , Over 20.000 songs are added on Spotify every day, The playlist made on Spotify are 2 billion and 5 million are the playlist that get edited or created every single day. This is surly a stream service that people like to use infact The number average of hours that listen to Spotify is 20 billion

Streaming Type: Pandora is a “free personalized radio” where users create stations based off of songs, artists, genres and even holiday and seasons. Users are able to personalize by “liking” songs or clicking a button not to play a song again. Users can discover new music when Pandora plays new songs on the radios.

A&M Records vs Napster was one of the biggest copyright infringement cases that later defined the legality of file sharing. It was a class action lawsuit that include over fifteen major record labels including Universal Studios, Warner Bros, and Sony Entertainment. The official case though is called A&M Records vs Napster. A&M Records sued Napster claiming they were infringing on their plaintiff's intellectual property. Napster was a peer to peer file sharing service. It was mostly used to share mp3 music files in mass volumes. This was right at the start of mp3 players. Music was starting to become easily accessible through digital copies.

In the case of Metallica v Napster (2000), Metallica filed suit against Napster for infringing upon their ownership of their unique music. “The suit claims that Napster ‘devised and distributed software whose sole purpose is to permit Napster to profit by abetting and encouraging’ piracy” (Doan, 2000). The music was original and copyrighted by Metallica. The Napster song downloads were being done without their consent or royalties paid.

In mid 1960s the 8-track tape was invented which was popular until the late 70s. During the 70s the Cassette tape was introduced, which became popular very quickly. The 1980s saw a revolution in music technology, which was a huge upgrade in the music industry. Personal stereos enabled people to play music on cassette tapes and listen to it through headphones wherever they went. Many people began listening to music while walking, travelling on public transport or exercising. In the late 1980s, compact discs (CDs) began to replace vinyl records. CDs were lighter and smaller than vinyl records and offered a much higher quality sound.

By mid 1980’s, the compact disc had taken over. In 1982, Japan invented the CD and it only took less than a year for it to arrive in America. The first American CD recording release was Billy Joel’s “52nd Street” and people preferred the CD recording over vinyl and cassette for a reason (Amale16). Like technological advances have shown for any other market, it proves to be also correct for the music industry – they improve and change, because they are, for the majority, better! The quality of the recordings on CDs were superb compared to vinyl’s or tapes, they were even more compact and space saving, and plus you could even store more memory (time/songs) on one disc. And this is why it only took America three years for CDs to overtake LPs in the music-recording market.

This is a monumental year for world music industry because global digital revenues exceeded physical record revenues for the first time. As a digital music service, streaming is the biggest issue in the music industry today. Digital music streaming has grown with the improvement of mobile communications and the spread of smartphones. Consumers got used to use streaming service rather than download for various contents including music and videos.

Starting in the year 1999, a company called Napster opened up a whole new world to the Internet where every song ever made was instantly available to you on your computer for free. It was created by an 18-year-old Northeastern University student named Shawn Fanning. Napster transformed personal computers into servers that shared mp3 files all across the Internet (Mayer, 2008). It became popular very quickly because exchanging mp3 files freely and having any music desired right at your fingertips had never been possible before. However, this program that provided the privilege of having free instant music to download did not last long, it was shut down after just two years by

Major record companies and internationally known bands such as Metallica and many others soon realized how badly Napster was taking a toll on their profits resulting in a major lawsuit charging Napster with contributory and vicarious copyright infringement -(“Piracy and File-Sharing”).  Napster appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Ninth Circuit Court noted that plaintiffs had established a prima facie case of direct copyright infringement, meaning that the record labels had to prove their ownership of the allegedly infringed content in order to establish their case -(“Piracy and File- Sharing”). 

The issues that will be slugged out in federal district court in San Francisco sound a little too pop culture to be all that serious. How many music CDs are people buying these days in record stores throughout the nation because of Napster? Is the technology that Napster uses legal? Napster is, of course, the wildly popular file-sharing service whose 20 million users have downloaded some half a billion songs--most copyrighted for free. The technology that Napster has brought to music listeners across the globe has allowed the freedom of obtaining music for free and should not be shut down by the entertainment industry's argument in federal court.

Napster, a free online file sharing network, allowed peers to share digital files directly with each other by way of connections through its software and system. The no cost peer-to-peer sharing gained popularity, particularly with trendy music. A&M Records took notice of the free digital music downloads and brought suit against Napster for direct, contributory, and vicarious copyright infringements (Washington University School of Law, 2013).