Which area of intellectual property law did this case
address?
a& m records inc. v. napster inc.
during the early 2000s, music fans freely shared their
favorite songs online. every day, they went to napster
and other peer-to-peer music sharing services to
exchange thousands and thousands of mp3 files. they
had access to almost every type of music and artist. there
was just one problem. no one was paying for anything.
musicians, songwriters, producers, and record companies
were losing millions of dollars.
so a& m records and other companies affiliated with the
recording industry association of america filed a lawsuit
against napster and its creator shawn fanning. (fanning
was a college student at northeastern university when he
began the file sharing service in 1999.) the suit accused
napster of contributory and vicarious copyright
infringement. the case landed in the united states court
of appeals for the ninth circuit. there, napster was
found guilty on both counts, and the site was forced to shut down in 2002. several years later, a similar file-sharing service known as grokster also had to cease operations when the supreme court tyler against it in mgm v. grokster.