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Napster: Redefining ‘Thou Shall Not Steal’? By Michael D. Wamble Whatever the outcome in the case brought against Napster by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a group that represents the interest of record companies, many recording artists and songwriters, a new question has arisen: Have technological advances redefined the seventh commandment? On July 26, Chief Judge Marilyn Patel of United States District Court in San Francisco ruled that Napster, an online music site that allows computer users to exchange copyrighted CD and other materials compressed in an MP3 format, was to shut down its service at midnight on July 28. Napster, which boasts that over 20 million users have downloaded its software, appealed the ruling to a higher court, which granted a stay July 30, temporarily keeping the site up and running past the midnight deadline. While Napster is in the public spotlight, it is not alone in the service it offers—the trade of music, otherwise found in record stores via the computer for free. Systems like Gnutella and Freenet operate in a similar fashion, but electronic cryptography makes it harder to discover what is being traded. Beyond the muddy language of current U.S. and international copyright laws, is the exchange of materials—in which the authors and creators of those materials do not profit—stealing? “It is a very cloudy area right now,” said Ronald Kizior, a professor in Loyola University of Chicago’s ISOM (Information systems and operations) department. “A major topic in the Napster case is intellectual property. If you as an artist create a CD and publish, you reap the rewards for your intellectual property, the material you hold the copyright to, just as in the case of sheet music or in another medium,” said Kizior, who also teaches a course in ethics and technology. The steady advances in what tasks personal computers can accomplish, such as downloading music from Napster, and the growing use of devices such as CD burners, is further temptation to save $20 [most CDs range in price from $13.99 to $18.99] and permanently “sample” recordings and concert materials that range from boy-band ’N Sync (featured artist in The Catholic New World’s “On the Record” column) to rap-metal act, Limp Bizkit, who recently performed in the Chicagoland area as part of a Napster-sponsored tour. It is also worth noting that many of the companies represented by the RIAA were cited earlier this year for illegally inflating the price of CDs through strong-arm business tactics. Despite these changes in technology, Kizior said it has not redefined what constitutes stealing. “It is basically against the law to copy a CD and sell it as an original. This applies to movies as well as music. So what’s the difference with Napster? It is still copying and denying the artists the rewards that are due to them,” said the Loyola professor. Napster, and its supporters, contend that instead of causing a decrease in music sales, those who utilize the site are more likely to purchase a CD they’ve sampled, to have their own copy of the artist’s work. The claim is that Napster functions, de facto, as an advertisement, much like a music video, to entice consumers to buy the song or songs. As the legality of Napster continues to undergo more bounce than the average Britney Spears video, Kizior said Catholics should be mindful that even if the courts eventually rule in favor of the music site, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is ethical. “There are a lot of things that are new here. It is a virgin area in which people are trying to apply laws that were written for old technology and it might not apply to newer technology. But we should remember that stealing is taking another’s property. Are they [Napster and its users] doing that? You can go back into history and look at examples, such as the ones I use in my class. In this country, there were once state laws that allowed segregation. It was legal, but was it ethical?”
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