Intro Essays - File Sharing Networks, Virtual Communities

Intro I can still picture those long lines and high prices of the latest CD. This has now become just another one of my childhood memories. No more lines or handing someone else my twenty-dollar bill. We can get our music for free now. This has been called one of the best inventions of the century. Many people including myself spend hours on top of hours downloading all those hard to get songs. Finally the consumers are the ones in control. Summary Shawn fanning a nineteen-year-old multi million dollar dropout had the same dream as many Americans had. One day he awoke and didn't go back to sleep until his task was completed. What was his task? To create a software program where people could share their music for free. This technology is called peer-to-peer file sharing and it's the biggest thing to hit the Internet since the Internet. Money and lawsuits are now rolling into Shawn's pockets like water. Record companies have been working feverishly day and night to try and put a stop to this fad. Companies realized how much this would affect their profits. Buyers could pay $18.99 plus tax for a CD or just spend twenty minutes online for free. As of yet, no one has been able to stop Napster. Even though some court cases are still in judgment it doesn't look to good for the record companies. This has knocked record companies on their feet. Napster is going to stay running for now. Response Napster. One word that is known by people of middle class, lower class, old, young, black, white nearly any classification. What would a car be like without a stereo? Can you imagine? Music is very important to people just like their money. So why waste your money when you don't have to. Napster, while being praised by buyers, hated by artists, and loved by Internet geeks, has done wonders to the music and Internet industry. Many artists have tried to stop this worldwide trend by filling lawsuits and starting groups against Napster. Metallica filed a lawsuit and won yet their music is still being download. On the other hand Limp Bizkit recently did a concert with Napster as the sole advertiser. Still, artists seem to think this software is legal theft. Companies have stilled failed to look at the hard facts. The music industry has had a 6.4% increase for this year alone (SpeakOut). Records are being broken with groups like N'Sync selling 2.4 million CD's the first week of sales (SpeakOut). So why are record companies and artists still angry? Greed!!! Napster is good for publicity. I'm sure a new group wouldn't mind having their music downloaded by 800 million people. That's as good as it gets. What is music made for? Last I heard it was for people. If this is true why don't we have a say in this matter? This is looked over by companies. Since Napster's debut people have been able to download that song they haven't heard since they were sixteen. Many people support Napster and resent the fact that it's called stealing. Prices have increased about five dollars a CD (SpeakOut). Napster gives hard working people a chance to sit by the fire and listen to their favorite jazz piece. Besides all this is, is another hobby. I don't care how cheap you are no one is going to download and burn a CD as a Christmas gift. People are still going to go to the store and reach for the plastic wrapped case. If the courts decide to ban Napster there is always going to be some kind of loop whole, I mean c'mon it's the Internet. So why waste more of your money with expensive lawsuits? Shawn fanning's invention of the P2P system is one of the biggest talked about subjects in technology. People can use it to download whole movies off the Internet and even the Centers for Disease Control are using it. Our own government!!! This is only the beginning to a whole new e-era. Hundreds of services are going to branch off from Napster. So why try to ban Napster when your going to have to do the same thing with hundreds of other categories. Obviously P2P