U.S. District Court, Northern District of California May 12, 2000,and UMG Recordings, Inc., et al. v. MP3.com, Inc. United States District Court, Southern District of New York May 4, 2000. These are two of the many cases that involve the copyright laws of Internet file sharing sites.

Napster was a small Internet start-up based in San Mateo, California. Made its proprietary MusicShare software freely available for Internet users to download. Users who obtain Napster's software can then share MP3 music files with others logged-on to the Napster system. MP3 files, which reproduce nearly CD-quality sound in a compressed format, are available on a variety of websites either for a fee or free-of-charge. Napster allowed users to exchange MP3 files stored on their own computer hard-drives directly, without payment. Napster was the first site to become as large as it did. The web site was a pioneer of file sharing software, which would lead to many others following.(gigalaw #1)

Napster typically involves the following basic steps: After downloadin

(1) the transmission of the material was initiated by or at the direction of a person other than the service provider;

(4) no copy of the material made by the service provider in the course of such intermediate or transient storage is maintained on the system or network in a manner ordinarily accessible to anyone other than the anticipated recipients, and no such copy is maintained on the system or network in a manner ordinarily accessible to such anticipated recipients for a longer period than is reasonably necessary for the transmission, routing, or provision of connections; and

Even if the court had determined that Napster meets the criteria outlined in subsection 512(a), subsection 512(i) imposes additional requirements on eligibility for any DMCA safe harbor. This provision states:

The final statement of the Napster lawyer’s was that Sony’s product(the VCR), which was primarily used for duplicating copyrighted material was not stopped from being used. If the same court made this decision why is it that it should now change its mind. In the end the Napster site was forced to shut down, there were many other that will pop up, in a never-ending battle of the music industry to try to keep it profits.

Napster used the sixteen-year-old case decision known as the Sony decision or just “Sony” in the court of appeals. This case decision was that video cassette recorder makers could not be liable for copy right infringement. This is because they can be used for non-infringing material, such as making copies for archival copies of copyrighted work as permitted under the "fair use" provisions of US copyright law.

Some topics in this essay:
Plaintiffs Napster, MP3com Inc, Selected Songs, Mateo California, District York, Recordings Inc, service provider, system network, mp3 files, copyright laws, District California, Napster Internet, Copyright Infringement, musicshare software, court found, service provider's, copyright act, copyrighted material, napster server, Wustrack Business, et al mp3com, recordings inc et, system network manner, inc et al, umg recordings inc,