This week, I was reacquainted with the story of Napster and the issue of copyrights. This is one of the many issues that I have seen blow over and blow back up on social media several times throughout my life. I remember even on Facebook and Instagram, sharing songs in a video wasn’t a big deal. All of a sudden, people’s videos started getting blocked, and people began to add extra comments to their post giving people credit for their work.
This is Napster
Napster is basically a search engine for music. It was initially released in 1999 and was built on copyright infringement. I think that this was one of the great examples of technology advancement and law disagreement. Although the release of Napster was extremely controversial, I think that it led the way for the revolution of streaming and the advancement of the music industry.
I think that after watching the Napster documentary and Rick Beato’s YouTube videos we can see both sides of the role that technological advancements have on the music industry and copyrights in general. I definitely agree that people should be given credit and be paid for their work. However, when new technology is prevalent and is clearly an interest to people, those in business have to choose whether they are going to fight it or embrace it and possibly capitalize off of it. We see this in much more than the music industry, but I’ll get back to that.
Rick Beato really nails it on the head with his videos concerning copyrights and “blockers” in today’s online society. He explains that these people are passing up the opportunity for what I would call free advertising. In his newest video, he tells us about how a Fleetwood Mac song has returned to the charts because of several viral Tik Tok videos. This displays the power of technology and the possibilities that can be offered to those who have the ability to change with the times. The same goes for Steve Jobs who introduced iTunes in order to solve the problem. In the Napster documentary, we also see how the music industry was hit hard due to both the introduction of technology and their inability to accept it.
Fair Use
We also have the Fair Use Doctrine to assess. This doctrine allows people to use copyrighted information or media for certain purposes, one being education. This fits into the conversation because it shows how laws have attempted to give some sort of leeway for those attempting to use copyrighted media. As we saw in the incident of the “What in the Butt” song, this has allowed people to use others ideas if they are attempting parody.
The big idea that I really got from all of this was the fact that laws and people have a hard time adjusting to new technologies. Not only do we see this with Napster and the music industry as a whole but we have seen this in previous weeks as well. Think about what we learned from Sexting Panic. This was another was in which laws failed to keep up with technology and have ended up punishing innocent people who were only doing the next big thing. In light of all this, I leave you with a question. How can we allow for societal and technological growth without severely punishing those who are only following suit?
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SOCIAL MEDIA & SOCIETY 
Hello Evelyn I would like to just begin stating I enjoyed reading your post for this week. The takeaway you had for this week was something I did not see right away, but actually agree with. We seen this trend 2 weeks in a row now and to answer your question I do not know how we can allow for societal and technological growth without punishing those following suit because it will always make a group of people upset or disagree with what is being done so as a whole we need to come to an agreement.
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This was a very good post! I thought it went over everything we talked about in class and I thought your ideas were good as well. I agree with what you said about how business owners are going to have to decide on whether or not to embrace technology. In my opinion theres no getting past technology and. it will keep advancing as well so business owners will have no choice, but to embrace the technology.
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I like that you stated the idea of free publicity. On Facebook I follow a lot of pages that usually are dedicated to different genres or music or eras of music. I like these pages because they regularly post videos of songs either live, if its a music video, or some sort or artistic visual to accompany a song. When I first started finding these pages, It would be because the page would post a video of a song I like and ill start searching through their posts and find more songs I may have not known before then. In a way, this is free publicity. I have become fans or artists who I may have not heard of and through the pages post they artist gains a fan which even though, If I’m not paying for a song, I will be more open to buying merchandise from the artist or paying for tickets to their shows. These things most likely not have occurred if it wasn’t for following these Facebook pages that share songs. Is it free publicity? I think it is and it should be fine as long as no bas intentions are behind it or any form of directly steeling.
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