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Behind the Music: Napster
On December 6, 1999, the Recording Industry Association of America, Inc. (RIAA) filed a lawsuit against Napster, Inc., the company behind the program of the same name that allows users to share MP3s through the company's server. In the past several months, a large legal debate and quite a bit of press has grown over the proliferation and use of Napster. Over 100 colleges and universities have blocked the company's website as well as its server. In the meantime, frustrated users have clamored to find ways around the firewalls and various other obstacles that block their primary means to free music. So what exactly is Napster? The company's webpage seems to sum it up pretty well:
Napster is a completely new way of thinking about music online.Essentially, Napster provides a server that connects users, allowing them to search through each other's MP3 archives. Rather than try to downplay the lawsuit, Napster has chosen to publicize it in an attempt to rally its users against those who would attempt to block the program. Besides a prominent link on their webpage that gives the details of the lawsuit, Napster.com has a forum allowing users to discuss their views on the legality of the program and the actions that have been taken against it. They also provides links to the RIAA's homepage as well as relevant news items. The RIAA's argument is that Napster, while admittedly providing an avenue for the legal distribution of MP3s, also facilitates and even encourages the distribution of copyrighted songs. According to Cary Sherman, Senior Executive Vice President and General Counsel of the RIAA, Many companies on the Internet are promoting artists without also trading in pirated music files. Companies like UBL, IUMA, Farm Club and MP3.com prove that there are many creative ways to promote new artists online without infringing on the rights of artists and copyright owners.Ironically, the RIAA has also filed a lawsuit against MP3.com. Napster, Inc. maintains that the program itself is perfectly legal, and that disallowing its use is a form of censorship. In essence, this is true. The program simply provides a means for users to connect and share files. Whether these are legally distributed files is completely at the discretion of the user. If the RIAA is successful in shutting Napster, it creates a dangerous precedent in the gray area of internet law. By extension, search engines such as Yahoo could be deemed illegal because they provide links to webpages with illegal content, such as child pornography and licensed software (warez). Although the outcome of the lawsuit is still pending, many universities are blocking access to the program's server, as well as the company's website. Oddly enough, however, most of these institutions are not as concerned with the legal issues surrounding Napster as they are with the alarming decrease in available bandwidth since its introduction. According to Students Against University Censorship (SAUC), there are over 100 schools that are currently blocking Napster. While some have claimed that they have blocked the program to avoid legal problems, most openly admit that their reason is simply that the Napster protocol is bogging down their networks. "During our busiest times the Napster protocol exceeds 40% of our network usage," says Bryan Adams, the network administrator for Trinity. While the Napster traffic between the Napster server and users is minimal, the networks are choked because of the peer-to-peer connections that the program facilitates. Essentially, the program turns users' personal computers into servers. One user could have 20 users simultaneously downloading songs off of their computer. When Napster is left running on the computer, the connection is maintained and other users are able to download songs throughout the day. While this is more convenient for those searching for that hard to find song, it is the bane of network admins because it consumes bandwidth even when the computer owner isn't looking for songs. Institutions block Napster by using a firewall, which is a general term for any kind of network protection. How the firewall operates varies from school to school, but there are several popular methods. One way is to disallow any traffic to and from the Napster server (server.napster.com). Users can not connect to anyone unless they first connect to the Napster server. This can be done by blocking access to the address itself, or by blocking the default port number that Napster is configured to use. This however, is very easy to bypass, because the user can simply change the port number in the program. But students in need of music are not so easy to dissuade, and there are as many ways to get to Napster as there are to blocking it. Some have set up proxy servers, which essentially forward the user to the Napster server. When it becomes to difficult to reach Napster outside the school, some have set up internal Napster servers using OpenNap so that a scaled-down version of the service can be achieved within the network. Trinity has chosen not to erect a firewall to block Napster. "At present we are not blocking Napster...we believe the students need to police themselves," says Adams. While they do expect to find a way to limit the Napster protocol (thus limiting the amount of bandwidth it can use), the school currently has no intention of blocking the service completely. According to Adams, Trinity's Computing Center policy has generally been one of personal responsibility. The Student Handbook provides documentation on what is legal and what is not, and expects the students to comply: Exchanging digital copies of music files, often in the "MP3" format, has become popular recently. Posting on the network, or in any other way exchanging copies of songs from commercial music CD's is illegal. Musicians and their recording companies do not provide you with a license to share copies of their music when you purchase an audio CD. On several occasions in the past, Trinity College was officially contacted by lawyers from the Recording Industry Association of America when such copies were traced to our campus. The RIAA and related groups vigorously defend the copyrights on their properties, and are have taken legal actions against students to preserve these rights. (Exerpt from the Trinity College Handbook of Student Computing)Thus the administration has left the issue in the students' hands. If they choose to trade illegal MP3s, they run the risk of criminal prosecution. Similarly, if the students want to use all of the network bandwidth on Napster, they are free to do so...at least for now. While the battle over access to the service continues, some have voiced concerns of censorship over schools' decisions to block the Napster website. Many argue that the website does not consume any more bandwidth than any other webpage, nor does it contain any illegal content and blocking it is therefore a form of censorship. Of particular concern to these protesters, such as SAUC, is that they are denied access to the message boards on the webpage which contain discussions of these very issues. Ironically, the press that this conflict has generated has only served to alert more potential users to the presence of Napster, a fact that Napster, Inc. is clearly trying to use to its advantage. Due to questionable actions such as covertly sending letters to schools threatening legal action, coupled with the existing greedy reputation of large record labels, the RIAA has made itself out as the bad guy, with Napster handily inheriting the role of the underdog. In the meantime, many believe that the real victims of this are the artists, who are quickly losing the means to obtain compensation for their work. Perhaps starving artiste Sean "Puffy" Combs says it best: I couldn't believe it when I found out that this Napster was linking thousands of people to the new Notorious BIG album "Born Again," a week before it even hit the streets. This album is a labor of love from Notorious BIG's friends to the man, his kids, the rest of his family and everyone else whose lives will never be the same since BIG passed. BIG and every other artist Napster abuses deserve respect for what they give us.
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