Peer-to-peer file sharing
...a war between ligament music providers there illegal counterparts, and the RIAA. Soon after Napster was shutdown the “Napster Effect” went into action. Companies started planning their own legitimate music services, while others tried to pick up where Napster left off. Kazaa Media Desktop appeared shortly after Napster’s demise. Kazaa, a peer-to-peer application similar to Napster, was created by Sharman Networks. Sharman Networks, headquartered in Australia, incorporated Kazaa in the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. This incorporation allows Kazaa to run without restrictions from United States laws. Kazaa started to grow very quickly. At any given time Kazaa has four million five hundred thousand users sharing nine hundred million files. Unlike Napster, Kazaa users can download anything from professional software to feature length films. Sharman Networks provides Kazaa free of charge, but they do have advertisements built in as well as software that tracks internet habits. Many people thought Kazaa was untouchable by U.S. laws. However, a Los Angeles federal judge ruled in January of 2003 that record companies and movie studios can proceed with a lawsuit against the parent company of Kazaa, Sharman Networks. Kazaa’s future looks dim, but there are many more options for the digital music user to choose from. After Napster was shutdown, Sony, AOL Time-Warner, Bertelsman and other companies started to created there own digital music services. These services were to be legitimate services for downloading music on the internet. By January of 2003 four major music services had been launched: Music Net, owned by EMI Group and AOL Time-Warner; PressPlay, a Sony and Vivendi Universal joint venture; Rhapsody, a company privately held by Listen.com,; and MusicNow, a privately held company by FullAudio. These services are all extremely different. Each service allows streaming, listening and downloading a certain number of songs, and then burn only a fraction of those songs if any. These plans cost from five dollars a month to more than thirty. No single service has signed more than fifty thousand users thus far, while last week Kazaa registered over three and a half million new downloads. Internet users look at these music services and see the restrictions. One single service has no more than one hundred and fifty thousand songs to choose from, while Kazaa has over nine hundred million. These legitimate services charge a monthly fee, while Kazaa is free. People tend to use Ka...