The Music Industry and the Internet

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that, despite the enthusiastic participation of some recording artists such as the Dave Matthews Band and Courtney Love, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has brutally attacked file sharing programs, such as Napster, which allow the downloading of music from the Internet, by arguing that the availability of music on the Internet is destroying record sales. The author points out that the industry's use of "fake files," which attempted to halt Internet music downloading, was an almost laughable endeavor, but intentionally damaging a consumer's computer was not so humorous. The paper relates that, in 1999, a law was passed, which declared that recorded music was the property of the company that recorded the music, not the artist; this outraged many artists.

From the Paper:

"The Dave Matthews Band broke ground by releasing the first single from their 2001 album "Everyday" through the now defunct file-sharing program Napster. Napster, an Internet based file-sharing program, gave its users the ability to search for and download music (in MP3 format) to their computers by directly tapping into another user's computer. The program gained popularity rapidly, with millions of users at its peak in 2000 and 2001. When the Dave Matthews Band premiered "I Did It" through Napster, the album debuted at number one, and generated the highest first-week sales the band had experienced thus far."

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