Is Free and Unlimited File-Sharing Good for Society?
Viewpoint: Yes, free and unlimited file-sharing through peer-to-peer systems such as Napster is good for society because it encourages choice, provides opportunities for underdogs, and spawns new and innovative technologies.
Viewpoint: No, free and unlimited file-sharing is not good for society. Rather, it is a form of piracy that threatens basic intellectual property rights that are rightly protected by law.
In 1999, a 19-year-old college student named Shawn Fanning developed a computer program and Web site that made it possible for users of the Internet to download and exchange musical recordings (and later, video recordings) for free. He called his system Napster, and in the next two years, Fanning would become a hero to many—and an arch-villain to many others. The controversy over Napster would open up larger questions concerning copyright, ownership, and the relationship of artists and media companies to the public.
The means of placing music or moving pictures on a computer file did not originate with Napster; that technology came in the form of the mp3, a compressed file format whose origins date back to the late 1980s, and which made possible the recording of large amounts of sound and video data on mp3 and mpeg files respectively.
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