What's legal and illegal on the Internet and within Kotnet?
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1. How to behave on the Internet?
Kotnet, and the Internet as a whole, has been available for a couple of years now. The basic principle of the Internet is sharing information, from scientific matters to products of art.
The main issue is the lack of legislation. There is hardly judicial protection for the creators of information on the web. However, copyright infringement can be punished and is one of the main goals of organizations like GILC, who are zealousing for the protection of copyrighted materials. (TOP)
It is unlawful to offend copyright on pictures or on any material (like mp3's) published in the World Wide Web. This includes saving on hard disk or printing of images or WWW-pages without the copyright holder's permission. By means of new technologies, providers of WWW-pages can trace illegal actions without a user's knowledge. Be aware that an Internet user may be prosecuted and fined when offending copyright. Copyright infringement is risky for the perpetrator if his identity is known.
However, if an infringer can find an area of public access without password control or where many users share the same password, the infringer can rely on not being caught since it may be impossible to prove who placed the infringing material in the public access area. An elementary precaution for an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to take, is not to permit any access to the system such as a guest account or an anonymous ftp without individual password control and access logging. The same goes for Kotnet, due to the login, if a Kotnet user violates too many 'rules' Ludit can undertake actions like banning a user from Kotnet as a punishment.
In reality, Ludit doesn't abuse this right, but they are perfectly entitled to ban anyone from Kotnet. (TOP)
MP3 is a file format for digital audio with a relative compression amount, which is why it is available via the Internet. The file size is small and the quality doesn't change. To play an MP3 file you need special software, e.g. Winamp. This music file is covered by the copyright legislation and the artists need protection because their work must not be downloaded without permission. However, in reality, MP3.com and many other sites (e.g. Napster) offer the possibility to download digital music for free.
MP3.com claims that the music that MP3.Com offers the netizen is not illegal. When the music lover downloads an MP3 of a favorite artist they receive a song from the original CD. The song is a digital copy of the original song. Whether this is legal or not, the internet user have to make a distinction between providers who offer the technology for MP3 and providers who distribute or purchase music with that technology. The latter and downloaders of MP3 are not allowed to do this if the copyright owner decides to prohibit the copying, adapting or performing their product.
Some artists exploit this new way of music sharing and have set up contracts with several music sites to distribute authorized music.
Napster (www.napster.com) is a well-known online music-distributing firm which has about 40 million users. It has arranged an agreement with Bertelsmann and Edel Music - two German record companies who wanted to sue Napster because of copyright infringement - to distribute music lawfully. In that way Napster will become a member-ship based site and they will pay royalties to the record companies. In return Bertelsmann (BMG) will withdraw the lawsuit and a loan of 50 million Dollars against Napster. In this way the music industry will take control over Napster.
Music lovers will have access to the entire music archive of Bertelsmann and they are no longer breaking the law. On the other hand, people will have to pay for their favorite music now where it used to be free. Therefore, the Napster-users will search and find other programs or sites where the Napster-competitors still provide free music.
Napster and BMG also want to convince the other record companies as well: EMI, Time Warner, Sony and Universal. The negotiations are still going on. This pay-based agreement can only succeed properly if the other companies are willing to participate in this system. If not, the future of Napster is not guaranteed.
The American rock group Metallica is suing Napster because of the music piracy of their songs. They also want to send a sign to the world that music piracy is a big problem for the music creators. They claim that in three days time 335.435 different users shared or downloaded five copyrighted Metallica songs. They are aware of the fact that Napster offers access to many music fans, but they claim their music is a way of making money, in the same way Napster employees receive an income for their job. (TOP)
(INDEX OF ARTICLES ABOUT NAPSTER)
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