Internet Distribution

Article Summary/Critique: Internet Distribution

In his article "Paying for the sins of their users: liability and growing uncertainty in a digital age," John Lobato addresses the realm of cyberspace, comparing it to the Wild West in terms of its battle with piracy and copyright infringement (357). The virtual world of Internet crime is markedly different of the physical world of crime; there are no fingerprints, DNA tests, witnesses, or landmarks for detecting criminals, and the Internet facilitates the anonymity of the perpetrator. The issue of distributors handing out products used by third parties "for the purposes of copyright infringement" is becoming increasingly troublesome. Although finding the criminals that do this is easy Internet sites openly make "pirated music and video�available for free download through online services" the courts have yet to find a solution for the problem and are "actively debating the merits of holding liable the distributors of products that enable the infringement of copyright" (Lobato 357).

Lobato discusses the response of the courts to the increasing number of court cases involving the Internet and copyright infringement. He examines the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM) suit in 2000 against two distributors of free online software, Grokster and Streamcast Networks, charging that they intentionally distributed their software to enable users to make illegal copies of copyrighted works in violation of the Copyright Act (Lobato 35

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cy on moral and ethical grounds, yet confines his argument to proving that stopping Internet piracy is a difficult task and that the courts are not truly equipped to handle it. The thrust of his article is to demonstrate how and why Internet piracy is hard to stop by legal means and to characterize the confusion and lack of concrete laws and rulings that might address the issue more directly. He challenges the common belief that although Internet piracy is rampant, the courts will take care of it for us; as he makes clear in his article, so far they have not been able to do much, and the matter might better be moved to Congress instead. In the second article, "MP3s are killing home taping: the rise of Internet distribution and its challenge to the major label music monopoly," Kembrew McLeod does a play on words, ironically recalling the lament of the 1980's that "home taping is killing music," a problem that he points out is now greatly overshadowed by the problem of unauthorized Internet distribution in today's environment (521). McLeod's argument focuses on the challenge that the trading of copyrighted music poses to major music labels, threatening their music monopoly that has been in place for a century. He contends that

Category: Science - I