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The case of A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc. was the first major case to address the issue of copyright law as it relates to peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing—and it changed the face of sharing music as we know it in the process. Napster, a peer-to-peer music-sharing platform, was started in 1999 to allow users to access and download digital MP3s from other users’ machines.
Unlike other music-sharing platforms, however, Napster’s central server was built to index its users’ music files and created a list of music that was available for download for free on the platform, removing the need for music fans to purchase MP3s of the music offered on the Napster platform. This led A&M Records to sue Napster for copyright infringement related to its role in distributing copyrighted works.
Napster’s defense was that it offered users a way to sample the music before making a purchase and that the users already owned the music, which it received via authorized distributions of the copyrighted works. The court agreed with A&M Records, ruling in part that Napster’s P2P file-sharing service was not a fair use of copyrighted works—making it much more difficult for copyrighted music files to be shared by using these types of platforms online.
This story originally appeared on Ironclad and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.
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