Professor Michael Carrier has published the results of a remarkable initiative on copyright and innovation that uses the music industry and Napster as the case study. Carrier interviewed leading executives at major record labels and technology companies in an effort to better understand the implications of the litigation strategy against […]
Post Tagged with: "napster"
Napster Drops Out of Canada, Warns Users Of Lost Purchases Due to Digital Locks
Napster Canada has advised its customers that it is shutting down operations effective December 16, 2011. The move comes weeks after Napster US became part of Rhapsody and users were assured that Canadians would be unaffected by the move. The company warns users to create backup copies of downloaded music […]
U.S. Paper Says No Decline in New Music In Napster Age
A new paper by Joel Waldfogel, an economist at the University of Minnesota and NBER, finds no evidence that Napster and P2P have resulted in a reduction in recorded music or new artists coming to market. The study also finds that independent music labels are playing an increasingly important role […]
Time To Slay the File Sharing Myths
This month marks the tenth anniversary of the debut of Napster, the file sharing service that had a transformative effect on the music and Internet services industries. While many commentators have marked the anniversary by reassessing Napster’s impact and speculating on what lies ahead, my weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) argues that now is also a suitable time to put to rest two myths about file sharing in Canada.
There are far more than just two myths (see textbox below), but the ones that have dominated debate is that all file sharing is legal in Canada and, perhaps as a consequence of this, that Canada leads the world in illegal file sharing activity. Neither claim is true.
Time To Slay the File Sharing Myths
This month marks the tenth anniversary of the debut of Napster, the file sharing service that had a transformative effect on the music and Internet services industries. While many commentators have marked the anniversary by reassessing Napster’s impact and speculating on what lies ahead, my weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) argues that now is also a suitable time to put to rest two myths about file sharing in Canada.
There are far more than just two myths (see textbox below), but the ones that have dominated debate is that all file sharing is legal in Canada and, perhaps as a consequence of this, that Canada leads the world in illegal file sharing activity. Neither claim is true.