Analysis of A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc.

Ben Paf
The case of A&M Records v. Napster is known by many to be the first
major case in America concerning copyright law in peer-to-peer file sharing.
The final ruling in the case held that Napster was liable for both vicarious and
contributory infringement. This was controversial to many; for example,
eighteen copyright law professors at various US universities frowned on the
ruling. Their quintessential argument is stated in one line of their brief- The
district courts ruling would ban a new technology in order to protect existing
business models, and would invoke copyright to stifle innovation, not to
promote it. In essence, they believed that this ruling would shut peer-topeer networks down, which could have a huge amount of potential. The
ruling threatened any further development of websites and software akin to
Napster, rather than simply asking for the removal of copyrighted material.
While the case is known as A&M Records v. Napster, the prosecution
actually comprised of all of the big four of music- Universal Music Group,
EMI, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Entertainment were all either
direct plaintifs, or had subsidiary record companies as plaintifs. Napster was
created by Shawn Fanning, at the age of eighteen. It allowed not only peerto-peer file sharing, but also a searchable list of all files on its server. This
feature is what made it rise drastically in popularity, drawing in millions of
users. Napster was essentially the first big peer-to-peer file sharing

company, and led the way for many future ones to arise. However, it could
not follow the courts orders for injunction and were forced to shut down,
filing bankruptcy a year later.
The Case
The various plaintifs sued Napster for both vicarious and contributory
copyright infringement. Soon thereafter, they applied for a preliminary
injunction, requiring Napster to remove the songs belonging to the plaintifs.
In its defense, Napster cited Sony v. Universal City Studios, stating that the
users of Napster were in fair use and that Napster was capable of noninfringing usage. In response to the injunction, they claimed that it was a
suppression of free speech. Upon reviewing the details of the case, I would
agree with the courts ruling at the time of trial. In the present day, however,
I find that Napster had a solid defense in its private, rather than commercial,
use.
Firstly, the presiding judge granted the injunction on the grounds that
the plaintifs showed a likelihood of success, sweeping aside Napsters free
speech defense. I agree with this decision. The next defense brought into
question was Napsters fair use defense. The US Code has a specific fourpart test for fair use, which the court applied. First, the purpose of the use is
brought under question- for example, commercial versus non-profit, or
educational, use. In this case, the court found it to be commercial. I do not
agree with this, but can understand the courts ruling, as I will explain later.

Second, the nature of the work is brought into question, in this case .mp3
files of music. Third, the amount of the information that is copyrighted
materials, or how much of it, percentage wise, was copyrighted. Fourth and
finally, the efect of the use on the copyrighted materials owners.
The first clause was deemed to be commercial. While the users of
Napster were not shown to download the music with the intent to sell it, they
did get these files for free, which lost the musics sellers money. Thus, it is
not fair use by right of the first clause. The second clause also failed in
defense, as the files shared were copyrighted and creative in nature, as
opposed to, for example, a research paper, which could be written by
anybody. The third clause also did not constitute fair use, as Napster users
used all of the copyrighted materials. Finally, it failed in the fourth clause as
it dropped both CD sales and potential for digital downloading of the music
by the recording companies. I agree with these findings. The court found that
Napster was capable of non-infringing uses, and allowed Napster to run as
long as they took down the infringing materials.
The only part of this trial that I do not agree with is the private versus
commercial use findings. The presiding judge stated Sampling on Napster is
not a personal use in the traditional sense that courts have recognized
copying which occurs within the household and does not confer any financial
benefit on the user. Instead, sampling on Napster amounts to obtaining
permanent copies of songs that users would otherwise have to purchase
While this makes sense at the time, I dont agree with it in the present day.

The only diference between sharing files in a household versus through the
internet is proximity to the source, according to the judge. However, look at
an mp3 player. Say youre going to college, on the complete other side of the
world. You want to download some tunes to listen to while youre there, so
you transfer them from your computer to your media player. Now, say youre
at college, at the same place, but you download the files through a peer-topeer service. You still get the same files, they end at the same place, and
they were both bought by somebody at some point. While people are
spreading out through the world, its harder to use the Internet being
diferent from household sharing, because the Internet is essentially the only
way to send things halfway around the world. You could buy a song, and let
hundreds of your friends download it at your house. You could buy a song,
and let hundreds of people download it from a peer-to-peer website. Why is
one legal, while the other is not?