Have you ever listened to your favorite song on the radio and recorded it? I remember when I would sit next to the radio and listen to it for hours at-a-time, just so that I could record my favorite songs off the radio. Now with computers and the Internet, I would go all over the Internet to look for songs, but only some of the time I was successful. Then I ran into a program called Napster, which made my music search much easier. Have you ever download free music off the Internet? Statistics say that 59% of people that download free music from the Internet, end up buying the music. Recently, there was a lawsuit made by the Recording Industry Association of America towards Napster concerning copyright issues, which in return had Napster rethinking its principles. Then in July of this year, a federal court judge ordered Napster to halt the trading of copyrighted material, but the decision was stayed. Napster has responded by saying that it is supporting music by bringing together more than 6 million users a day, whom all support Napster .By downloading free music over the internet, people support artists by liking their music.How Internet music sharing works. In order to start downloading music, people first must start by getting the program “Napster.” When this program is installed in the computer, its starts working by connecting to the Internet and creating a list of mp3 files available in the users computer, which in return sends it to the main Napster computer. When someone searches for a particular song the list of that song comes up with all available matches, and then the person can choose the one to download. After this, the users computer then connects to the other party’s computer and commences the transfer.To what extent does music sharing break the law? The real theft is taking place when people sell discs online that they have made of bootlegged songs, not when someone listens for his own enjoyment. The ...
