Friday, June 01, 2007 Piracy on the Internet By Clint Fabiosa & Andrew Ong I protect
IN the area of music, MP-3 technology has made it easy to compress music files, so that they take up considerably less space, are easy to upload and download over the Internet, and can be neatly stored in mobile devices.
Because of the ease of use of such technologies, they can be used to download and copy without the knowledge or consent of the holders of the rights to the music, in violation of the spirit and express provisions of copyrights laws.
Napster was a highly successful music file-sharing website and program (up to 10,000 downloads per second) using musical copyrighted works without the authorization of the right holders.
It was a business built on illegal transactions, but which, interestingly, has contributed to the development of new business models within the recording industry.
On Feb. 12, 2001, the United States Court of Appeals rendered a landmark decision in the case against Napster, ruling that the latter’s “fair use” defense was without merit, thus, making all transactions under it illegal.
