Advanced Copyright Law on the Internet

he knew of the users’ infringing actions, and yet substantially participated by

inducing, causing or materially contributing to the users’ infringing conduct.

Netcom, 907 F. Supp. at 1382. In this case, Sherman did more than provide the

site and facilities for the known infringing conduct. He actively solicited users to

upload unauthorized games, and provided a road map on his BBS for easy

identification of Sega games available for downloading. Additionally, through

the same MAPHIA BBS medium, he offered copiers for sale to facilitate playing

the downloaded games.^1616

(c) The Peer-to-Peer Filing Sharing Cases

(1) The Napster Cases

In December of 1999, the Recording Industry Association of America, Inc. (RIAA), on
behalf of 18 of its members, filed a complaint in federal court in the Northern District of
California for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement against Napster, Inc., the
operator of a Web site (www.napster.com) designed to enable its members to locate music files
in the MP3 format^1617 stored on the hard disks of other members, and to initiate downloads of
such files through a “peer-to-peer” architecture – i.e., transfers directly from the computer of one
user to the computer of another user without passing through the Napster servers.

1. Factual Background. Napster offered to its members a piece of proprietary software
   called “MusicShare” for download from its website free of charge. When a Napster user logged
   on, the MusicShare software would interact with the Napster server software to connect the user
   to one of many servers operated by Napster, would read a list of names of MP3 files that the user
   had elected to make available on his or her personal computer for sharing with other users (by
   placing them in certain designated directories on his or her hard disk known as the “user
   library”), and would then store the names of those files in an index maintained on the Napster
   server. Once the file names were successfully uploaded to the index, each user library, identified
   by a user name, would become a “location” on the Napster servers. Napster locations were
   short-lived – they were respectively added or purged every time a user signed on or off of the
   network. Thus, a particular user’s MP3 files designated for sharing would be accessible to other
   users only while that user was online.^1618

An account holder could use the search tools included in the MusicShare software to find
MP3 files being shared by other users by searching the index containing the names of MP3 files
that online users saved in their designated user library directories. Users wishing to search for a
song or artist could do so by entering the name of the song or artist in the search fields of the

(^1616) Id. The court further held that because Sega had established contributory liability on the part of Sherman, the
court need not address whether Sherman was also liable under the theory of vicarious liability. Id.
(^1617) MP3 stands for Motion Picture Expert Group 1, Audio Layer 3. MP3 is an algorithm that compresses a digital
music file by a ratio of approximately 12:1, thereby reducing the size of the file so that it more easily and
quickly can be downloaded over the Internet. A&M Records Inc. v. Napster Inc., 54 U.S.P.Q.2d 1746, 1747 n.1
(N.D. Cal. 2000).
(^1618) A&M Records Inc. v. Napster Inc., 114 F. Supp. 2d 896, 905 (N.D. Cal. 2000).