Filesharing and Copyright

A Project of the
IUPUI Copyright Management Center

Kenneth D. Crews, Samuel R. Rosen II Professor of Law
Associate Dean of the Faculties for Copyright Management
Patrick Okorodudu, Esq. UITS Copyright Coordinator

Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis
530 West New York Street
Indianapolis, Indiana 46202
Voice: 317-274-4400 Fax: 317-278-3326
http://www.copyright.iupui.edu

Filesharing is the process of sending or accessing stored files from one computer to another, by means of networked connections and software known as a "filesharing applications." The process of filesharing raises copyright issues of reproduction and distribution of protected works.

Distributing copyrighted material without explicit permission from the copyright owner is often against the law. While filesharing applications such as KaZaA, Gnutella, and Morpheus may not themselves be illegal, the use of these systems to share files may create an infringement of the rights of the copyright owner. Anyone who sends or receives files is incurring the risk of a legal violation. . When you download a copy of one of an illegally distributed file(s) to your own machine – even if you download just one song, movie, or software application – you may be committing an illegal action. In addition, when you install many of the applications used to download such files, the software is automatically set to share the files you download with others, whenever your computer is connected to the Internet. You could therefore be distributing copyrighted material without necessarily realizing it.

Filesharing of copyrighted works is legal only if:

1. You are the copyright owner of the material, or
2. The copyright owner of the material grants permission, or
3. The material is in the public domain, or
4. The use of the material is a "fair use" under the law, or
5. The material falls within another statutory exception.

Fair use plays a key role in the online world just it has done with other forms of traditional communication. Fair use is a legal doctrine that allows the public to make limited uses of copyrighted works without permission. Fair use may not be what you expect. Therefore, do not assume that a nonprofit, educational use or giving credit for the source of the work, or that because you are merely sampling a movie or music clip while using other peoples copyrighted materials creates an inherent fair use. In addition, purchasing a music CD generally does not give you the right to distribute or share the songs on it. For information about fair use, see: Copyright Management Center: Fair-Use Issues.

Some actions you can take to avoid copyright law infringement are:
• Ensure that your file sharing application is not set to share the files you have on your computer. If it is set to share files, ensure that you have explicit permission from the copyright holders for sharing ALL of the files stored using this application.

• Ensure that the distributor of a file you are interested in downloading has permission from the copyright holder to be distributing it. Give yourself the benefit of doubt and assume that you do not have permission to download or distribute a file unless you have proof to the contrary.

• When you purchase music, movies, games, software, and other multi-media files, READ THE LICENSE carefully. It will tell you if you have permission to convert the material to other formats for your own use, and whether or not you can share the material with others.

•· Educate yourself on what you can legally download and what you can legally share with others.

·• Monitor the popular news and press to keep up-to-date on the efforts of the music and movie industries to propose legislation to safeguard their intellectual property rights, and ensure that your voice is heard by your local legislators when you have an opinion on these proposed measures.

Napster and the Filesharing
“Napster” has been a name synonymous with Filesharing. Napster used a P2P system to organize and make available to web music users vast selections of music and movie files.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on 12 February 2001 that the music Filesharing system known as “Napster” committed repeated infringements of copyright law as millions of users uploaded and downloaded copyrighted protected sound recordings. Recent news reports have focused on the practical implications of the computer-based music and movie filesharing applications/systems. For more information on Fair Use and Napster, see: A & M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc.: Implications for the Digital Music Library http://dml.indiana.edu/pdf/AnalysisOfNapsterDecision.pdf

Created: August 9, 2004