Music Promotion or Piracy?: The Napster and MP3.com cases

The second of two significant court rulings on online music trading was handed down earlier this month. MP3.com, Inc. http://www.mp3.com was found guilty of copyright infringement, possibly facing up to $250 million in damages to Universal Music. This comes on the heels of July's verdict against Napster http://www.napster.com. The two cases have fueled intense debate among musicians, record company executives and fans. Here are a few links related to these cases, as well as some of their implications for sharing of copyrighted information over the Internet.

For case documents and related material on the Napster case, connect to The UCLA Online Institute for Cyberspace Law and Policy http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/iclp/hp.html and click on "A&M Records v. Napster." You will retrieve all court documents, including expert witness testimony. These also are available, along with the legal documents of the MP3.com case, at the Web site of the Recording Industry Association of America http://www.riaa.com/legal.cfm. RIAA also presents its views on protecting artists' rights in the online domain.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation holds a hefty archive of files and links relating to "Intellectual Property-Audio and MP3" http://www.eff.org/pub/Intellectual_property/Audio/. These contain information on both cases, with statements by artists, legal scholars and the EFF itself, which presents a policy statement arguing against industry litigation and in favor of free and open information exchange.

Policy.com http://www.policy.com includes papers reflecting several points of view regarding the online sharing of music files; enter Napster or MP3 in the search box to locate these. Of course, the cite is interactive, welcoming reader feedback. Significant is an article entitled "I Want My MP3," spotlighting musicians on both sides of the issue: the rock group Metallica-principals in the Napster case-and rap group Public Enemy. Other musicians have formed Artists Against Piracy http://www.artistsagainstpiracy.com/html/main.htm and have launched a public-awareness campaign for respecting intellectual property.

The Web site for a conference co-sponsored by the EFF and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society entitled "Signal or noise? The future of music on the net" http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/netmusic.html features a briefing book, along with RealPlayer audio and video files of the proceedings, which features legal and music scholars, record producers and musicians.

News stories involving both the Napster and MP3.com cases continue to break. Additionally, there is a pending lawsuit against Scour, Inc. http://www.scour.com, another source of downloadable music files. You can keep up-to-date by consulting several online databases on the UB Libraries Web site to access current articles, such as Dow Jones Interactive, Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe, The International Index to Music Periodicals or the Music Index.

For assistance connecting to the World Wide Web via UB computer accounts, contact the Computing Center Help Desk at 645-3542.

-Nina Cascio and Richard McRae, University Libraries