Patel also announced that music publishers would likely be allowed to consolidate their cases into a single class-action suit.\u00a0 The judge said she expects to create a limited class of parties eligible to enter a class-action suit against Napster. A class-action suit would be devastating to Napster because each publisher could potentially collect hundreds of thousands of dollars per copyright infringement.<\/p>\n\n
The court struggles have had an impact on the number of music files that appear to be available on the Napster service.\u00a0 In April 2000, regular spot checks by the Pew Internet Project showed that the average Napster user sharing files on the system had about 100 songs on his or her computer\u2019s hard drive.\u00a0 As the case filed by the recording industry against Napster came to a climax in late July 2000, Napster users began to increase the number of songs they were making available.\u00a0 Pew Internet Project spot checks suggested then that the average number of shared files grew to between 120 and 130.\u00a0 When the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals was hearing Napster\u2019s case in January 2001, the average number of shared files per user jumped to between 180 and 200.\u00a0 However, after the federal appeals court upheld the district court\u2019s ruling that Napster had to stop facilitating the sharing of copyrighted files and Napster began to block the sharing of some copyrighted songs from its index, the numbers fell sharply.\u00a0 Spot checks by the Pew Internet Project in March and April suggest that the number of shared files per user had fallen to the 70-80 range.<\/p>\n\n
In an effort to comply with the U.S. District Court\u2019s ruling, Napster claims it has blocked more than 1.7 billion song files from its directory as of April 10, 2001.\u00a0 The figure represents fewer than the actual number of blocked songs, however, because users give multiple titles to individual songs, in some cases, in apparently deliberate attempts to ensure popular songs are not recognized by Napster\u2019s copyrighted-song sniffing system.\u00a0 For instance, one user sharing songs from Bruce Springsteen\u2019s new live album titled one track \u201cBawn in the USA,\u201d and another sharing Christina Aguilera songs called one \u201cWhat a Girls Wants.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Yet, even as Napster\u2019s legal hardships rose, less centralized file sharing systems came into being. They will be perhaps impossible to regulate because they don\u2019t function as Napster does through a central mediating server that searches through the \u201caddresses\u201d of MP3 files stored on Napster users\u2019 computers.\u00a0 For instance, one of the new technologies, Gnutella, creates a network of users over the Internet, and transmits a search request from one user to other users\u2019 individual computers, until the file is found.\u00a0 Gnutella has no company behind it, and no central servers, so it is virtually impossible to shut off or regulate.\u00a0 Several Web sites such as BearShare and LimeWire interface with the Gnutella network in easy-to-use, Napsteresque fashion. Unlike Napster, which was established specifically for audio files, Gnutella and other peer-to-peer networking systems such as FreeNet facilitate the transfer of a variety of multimedia file formats and software.<\/p>\n\n Most major record companies are trying to find ways to exploit this burgeoning interest in online music transmission.\u00a0 AOL Time Warner Inc. (Warner Music), EMI Group PLC (EMI) and Bertelsmann AG (BMG Entertainment) recently agreed to join together with software and Internet-audio-and-video distribution company RealNetworks to form an online subscription based music network called MusicNet.\u00a0 And Napster itself has said it plans to move to a subscription-based service in the next few months.<\/p>\n\n The downloading audience <\/b><\/p>\n\n As of February 2001, 29% of American Internet users say they have downloaded music while online. That is a notable increase from the 22% of Internet users who said in July-August 2000 they had ever downloaded music. Moreover, the probability of finding an Internet user downloading music on any given day increased nearly 100% in the six months between August 2000 and February 2001. Downloading of music increased in virtually every demographic category.<\/p>\n\n One of the major attractions of the Internet to newcomers is the fact they can download music so conveniently and, in most instances, at no extra cost. While they are hesitant to do some of the more sophisticated activities online such as buying products or getting job information from online sources, Internet newcomers are almost as eager to download music as those who have been online for longer periods of time.\u00a0 Not only did downloading music from the Internet become more generally common among all experience levels of Internet user, but the frequency with which these people downloaded music increased as well.\u00a0 Most dramatic of all was the increase in downloading music among those with substantial Internet experience.<\/p>\n\n The act of downloading music is still more a province of online men than online women. Thirty-six percent of male Internet users have downloaded music, a sharp increase from the 24% of online men who reported they had downloaded music when we did our summer 2000 survey. Some 23% of female Internet users have downloaded music files, up from the 20% who said they had done so as of six months ago.<\/p>\n\n Young Internet users are very enthusiastic about this online activity. Half (51%) of Internet users between the ages of 18 and 29 have downloaded music and 13% of those with online access are downloading music on a typical day.\u00a0 The probability of finding someone from this age segment downloading music on any given day increased nearly 83% during the interval between polls while the chances of finding an Internet user between the ages of 30 and 49 downloading music doubled.<\/p>\n\n The Pew Internet Project polls indicate that the less money a person makes the more likely it is he or she downloads music from the Internet.\u00a0 This might result from the fact that downloading music is a particularly appealing activity to young Americans and, as a rule, they live in households with less income than those who are middle-aged or older.<\/p>\n\n Some 36% of Internet users who live in households making less than $30,000 annually download music while online — this is up from 28% in July-August 2000.\u00a0 In comparison, the percentage of Internet users from households earning $75,000 or more who download music increased from 15% in July-August 2000 to 24% in February 2001.\u00a0 The likelihood of finding an Internet user from the most wealthy households surveyed (more than $75,000 annual income) downloading music while online increased nearly 75%, while the likelihood of finding a music-downloading Internet user from the least wealthy households surveyed (less than $30,000 annual income) increased nearly 117%.<\/p>\n\n Young music downloaders<\/b><\/p>\n\n The Pew Internet Project conducted a special survey of 754 children between ages 12 and 17 between November 2 and December 15, 2000. That survey sample is slightly more upscale and more composed of white children than our general surveys, but the differences were not greatly at variance with our other surveys. The youth survey showed that more than half the children (53%) in that age bracket have downloaded music. It was particularly popular with online boys, some 60% of whom said they downloaded music, compared to 47% of girls. Some 73% of older boys (ages 15-17) had downloaded music. There was some evidence that the prevalence of downloading increased with age. For instance, 44% of the kids between ages 12-14 had downloaded music and fully 61% of those 15-17 had done so.[1. This survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 points for the results based on all children.]<\/p>\n\n What music lovers download <\/b><\/p>\n\n![\"More](\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/internet\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/media\/A2E3248A5C48496C81CC7B5DBCC41446.jpg\")
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