Copyrights are taken very seriously in, not only the United States of America, but also the world as a whole. Copyright infringement is a delicate subject, in which many businesses and people walk a fine line between breaking the law, and exercising their rights as citizens.

In the following essay you will read about the Napster controversy, as well as Mp3.com’s involvement in copyright infringement. You will read about what happened to a single man, Jeffery Levy for posting copyrighted material on the Internet. Finally you will learn some of the steps major corporations such as Time Warner are doing to help stop copyright infringements of Mp3s.

In mid 1999, the dreamer Shawn Fanning created which may well have been the biggest Internet controversy of the turn of the century, The Napster Community. It took a mere few months to create this stunning new technology, coupli

Mp3.com was forced to settle with two major record labels Time Warner for $20 million, and BMG for $80 million.

Despite the suits the RIAA has filed against MP3 companies, the group says it supports digital audio and recognizes that digital audio is the future of music. The RIAA works with companies such as RealNetworks to distribute music over the Internet and cut down on illegal copies by using electronic measures such as Digital Rights Management. This involves placing tracers on mp3 files, so that once a mp3 file is downloaded, it can’t be re-uploaded to another computer, or posted on an internet site, however this feature is able to be turned of at any time.

However Mp3.com is in violation of the copyright act of 1971, which prohibits anyone but the copyright owner from making a copy of a recording. Mp3.com was making their own copies, without permission.

Secondly Napster also tried to claim that its service’s were merely for users to sample, or browse sound recordings. This defense was shot down because browsing requires limited usage, not full scale downloading, which was the case with Napster.

On February 12th the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Napster knew its users were violating copyright laws through its music file-sharing service. The court allowed the company to continue to operate until U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel could re-draft her injunction.9 The three-judge panel specifically cited a memo drafted by Napster's co-founder Sean Parker as evidence the Web site knew its users were violating copyright laws. In that memo, the court said, Parker said the company needed to remain ignorant about the "real names" of the users because "they are exchanging pirated music." For that reason, the court found that Napster was involved in "contributory and vicarious infringement" and had full knowledge that it was allowing its users to infringe upon copyright laws.

In December of 1999 the RIAA filed a lawsuit against Napster. Eventually by July 2000, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel issued an injunction against Napster, ordering the company to prohibit copyrighted songs from appearing on its online file-sharing service, a move that would essentially shut the service down.5

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