History of Music Piracy
Napster
Since 1999 and the emergence of Napster, music piracy has become more widespread and prevalent because of the accessibility of the Internet. The file sharing program Napster was developed by Shawn Fanning in order to make finding and downloading music over the Internet easier. Napster quickly grew, and was used by millions but this got the attention of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). They sued Napster at the U.S. District Court of San Francisco for “assisting others in the copying, downloading, uploading, transmission, or distribution of copyrighted musical work". Napster was shut down shortly after this case, but many other similar file sharing sites appeared in its stead. Since then, millions of people all across the world have adopted music piracy as a regular practice. Music piracy is almost as widespread as Internet use, but is it really immoral to share files, or should it be made legal?
