Reasoning Of The Court: A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc

During the hearings, the courts found Napster to be the epicenter of copyright infringement. Holding it high on a pedestal as the leading trafficker of music, Napster was forced to abandon ship… or should we say put their Users on time-out. The ways of thinking in this instance were mostly of the catastrophic effect that Napster had on the music industry in general. All of the music that people pay for when walking into a record store were being easily downloaded, copied, burned, distributed for absolutely free at the click of a mouse. It’s obvious why the court would find Napster a substantial culprit to the downfall of the music industry, but the real battle here is pinning it to Napster itself. Fail. Napster itself could not be accused of the damages being done to the music industry or be held liable to copyright infringement... All of their users had checked the agreement box prior to installation of the Napster Peer2Peer sharing program and unknowingly relinquished all accusations towards Napster and put it all on themselves and their peers. It wasn’t Napster’s fault at all… http://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/cjoyce/copyright/release10/AMRecords.html “>“This court has determined above that Napster does not meet the requirements of subsection 512(a) because it does not [*30] transmit, route, or provide connections for allegedly infringing material through its system.” It was the users who were infringing, but not necessarily making a profit on it so the real trial and questions should be put forth on them… Which is still an ongoing dilemma and ever growing problem, but look at what we have now… iTunes at $0.99 a song… I guess that beats a jail sentence for copyright infringement, I’m sure users record companies are happy about this.