SoundSearch -- A Proposal to Reform an Industry in Crisis [Excerpt]
The major record labels were not alone in this fight. Musicians were fighting for the fair and legal distribution of their music alongside the labels. Alex Winter’s documentary Downloaded depicts this battle, highlighting that the most vocal opposing force was the American heavy metal band, Metallica. In an article for Forbes Magazine, the drummer for Metallica, Lars Ulrich, made this statement: “It is sickening to know that our art is being traded like a commodity rather than the art that it is.”
Legal actions were taken against the illegal file sharing program, Napster, by multiple major labels along with by Metallica itself. According to an online article written by Christopher Jones during this heavily broadcasted war of legality, “Metallica filed a lawsuit against Napster in the US District Court, Central District of California, alleging that the company encourages piracy by enabling and allowing its users to trade copyrighted songs through its servers.” The lawsuit calls Napster on “copyright infringements, unlawful use of digital audio interface device, and the Racketeering Influenced & Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO)”. It was Napster vs. the industry, and after heated arguments, debates, and a trip to the US Supreme Court, Napster lost the battle.
An excerpt from the lawsuit itself states, “Napster has ‘devised and distributed software whose sole purpose is to permit Napster to profit by abetting and encouraging’ piracy.” The company was ordered to remove all copyrighted music from it’s system and to no longer provide access to others’ hard drives that contained this copyrighted material. The dream that Shawn Fanning, Sean Parker, and John Fanning had built was gone. The music community that had taken the industry by storm was gone. It was all gone, but the musicians already associated with labels knew that they would finally start getting what they deserved again.
