Alongside the accelerating pace of technological advancement, copyright law has constantly evolved, struggling to encompass every avenue of infringement. Global integration, itself provoking revolutionary innovations in data sharing, has time after time expanded beyond the foresight of legislative bodies who have attempted to match their laws to the current times. Ever since the first international effort was made to enforce copyright, at the 1883 Paris Convention, a multitude of international treaties have emerged and substantial political pressure exists globally for non-members to adopt the standards of the rest of the world. The most expansive piece of international legislation to date, TRIPS, and the upcoming Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement both work to reduce the globe’s most prevalent and financially draining form of piracy, software piracy. Many individuals fear that this new legislation will empower customs agents at borders to seize laptops and Mp3 players containing illegally obtained music, but the committee has recently stated that the laws will not take that form.
When Napster was under scrutiny by the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2001, it claimed that the files being shared between users were legally distributed under the ‘fair use’ doctrine of copyright law, which allows infringement for “literary criticism, social comment, news reporting, education, scholarship and research”. The court did not agree, considering the reproduction with Napster to be illegal and commercial . Napster was charged with both contributory infringement, by encouraging its clients to post and share, as well as vicarious infringement, due to its control over the networks and revenue through site visitation. Where Napster fell, however, countless file-sharing services have sprung up in its place and will continue to be a large monetary leak in the U.S. Intellectual Property market. In a decade when the U.S. is losing approximately 6.9 billion dollars a year due to piracy, it is frightening to consider that intellectual property accounts for well over 50% of American exports.
With Napster out of the picture, websites such as Megaupload, Rapidshare, Filestube and many others have emerged to allow instant file-to-file sharing. While millions of web users utilize these services daily through downloading, it is only the domain manager and users who upload content who are at legal risk. With such a disproportionately distributed risk, a powerful ‘black market’ emerges that is essentially risk-free for those who steal, as long as they don’t sell.
While intellectual property laws cannot keep pace with the development of new distribution systems, a common mantra has held strong since the old days of ftp server pirating:
“Distribution leaves tracks – If you only download you can relax”
Jared
