It was only a matter of time before musicians filed lawsuits against Napster for listing downloadable audio files of their records on Napster's cooperative database. Metal band Metallica was the first to announce a lawsuit on April 13, 2000, alleging the company "violated the law by committing continuing copyright infringements, unlawful use of digital audio interface device, and violations of the...

With the recent shut down of the peer-to-peer file sharing utility Audiogalaxy, copy protection of all kinds of data is a very hot topic. Distribution of music, movies, and software is running rampant, and many believe the solution lies in better copy protection. To learn the basics of copy protection, visit Link Data Security (1). This company specializes in secure products that reduce piracy,...

Founded in 1986, PD Info (taken over in early 1999 by Haven Sound, Inc.) provides information and resources for identifying public domain materials. As part of that project, this site has been developed to help users understand what music they can freely use and how they may use it. As the site explains, the rules for public domain use are not as clear-cut as they seem, and users will find a...

On January 12, 2000, MP3.com launched Instant Listening Service and Beam-it, free services that allow users to listen to their music CDs through their computers using MP3's applications and technology. A user loads CDs into his or her CD ROM drive, and the CD is then matched to one of the 40,000 CDs in MP3.com's database. Then MP3.com transfers a MP3-formatted copy of the CD from their database...

Yesterday US District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel issued a temporary restraining order, directing Napster not to facilitate or permit infringement of copyrighted material. Because the immensely popular person-to-person music trading service does not have the capability to separate copyrighted materials from non-copyrighted, this ruling will effectively shut down Napster at midnight tonight, pending...

This online edition of a book published by the National Academy of Sciences is an example of its subject matter as it explores the issue of intellectual property in a digital age. The book examines the question of what happens to copyright issues when innumerable numbers of people can download a book (or a song, e.g., through Napster) from one copy on the Web? (Apparently, the National Academy of...

A federal judge's order, made public Wednesday, January 30, 2002, puts the recording industry's copyright infringement suit against Internet song-downloading service Napster, Inc. on hold until February 17, 2002. The case was put on hold for a month after both sides submitted requests to seek a possible settlement. Capitol Records, Inc. and Virgin Records America were the only two recording labels...

On Monday a three-member panel from the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that a lower court decision requiring Napster to immediately halt music swapping was "overbroad." This week's decision was anything but a victory for Napster, however, as the panel instructed US District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel to craft a narrower injunction that would still require Napster to block...