Music Piracy
How the Treasure Map Changed the World
Pepsi/ITunes ads.
Ads for Napster and Free Music download programs
In 1999, Shawn Fanning was a computer science student at Northeastern University when he wrote the web code that was to become Napster. Napster at the time was a file sharing program where users could easily download, upload and share music files in the form of MP3s to anyone using the program around the world. When Fanning first developed the program he gave it out to 30 of his friends to test and let him know what they though. In a week’s time more than 15,000 people had downloaded the software.
Fanning’s uncle took a look at the software and saw what potential it held and brought Fanning and the program to where the digital world was growing and business was taking to the World Wide Web, Silicon Valley. Promoting and marketing Napster felt safe to the Fanning’s because “Napster was protected by a loophole in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that partially protected the creators of Napster.” (DeVoss 2006)
In December of 1999 the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed its first law suit against Napster. The law suit helped Napster become a household name and hundreds of thousands of people downloaded the program boosting Napster’s users when they were still in the beta version.
The creation of Napster caused a cultural shockwave on how products were protected in the digital form. Laws were changed, and spawned cultural lines between musicians and their fans. There is a possibility without Napster there would be no ITunes, Spotify, or Rhapsody to name a few. In fact when ITunes was launched they teamed up with Pepsi to run ad campaigns that said “download the said “Download music at ITunes. Legally.” They also ran an ad that was narrated by a teenage who was prosecuted by the RIAA, The band Green Day sung “I fought the law” and the ad showed young adults sitting in their bedroom looking sad and just the word, “Busted” or “Incriminated”.
“A brilliant parody of the ad by James E. Saldana (and produced by IDC films) launches with Twisted Sister's rally cry from “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” Images of the same fresh-faced young people flash on the screen, with captions that have been revised to read “incriminated by an illegal monopoly,” “overcharged for music,” and “busted with your tax dollars”” (DeVoss 2006)
Napster had a relatively short life in the overall big picture. It did leave a wake of law changes, law suits and how we as music fans get our music. Napster was shut down in 2001, dozens of programs just like Napster were popping up all over the internet. Most of these programs were based out of the United States, and were untouchable by the copyright laws.
In 2004 a survey conducted by Peter Hart, a simple question was asked to the people surveyed. Is it illegal to download music for free? 63% of the people said yes it was illegal and 28% thought it was legal to download music for free. Today I feel that this topic has been in the news and at the top of a lot of conversation lists, it is common knowledge that music downloading without the artist consent is illegal.
James E. Saldana Ad
Pepsi/ITunes Ad
The big three major record labels Sony, BMG and Universal had all promised consumers that by 1999 they would be able to purchase and download music to their personal computers. That promise just passed unfulfilled saying that the technology wasn’t there, but it was and Napster was the proof. Even when the big labels were able to harness the technology, the quality of the music being downloaded was well below CD quality. The piracy software was allowing users to download songs at almost CD qualities, proving was again that the technology lay with the pirates.