Napster Case involved a peer-to-peer music service and led to the conclusion that sharing music files is not what?

• A. Sharing music files is fair use.
• B. The service was shut down for reasons unrelated to IP rights.
• C. Napster was never sued.
• D. Sharing music files is not fair use.

Answer: (D)

Fair use is a limited exception that allows certain uses of copyrighted works without permission, but it isn’t automatic and is judged by factors like whether the use is transformative, the nature of the work, how much was used, and the impact on the market. In the Napster case, the court found that a service designed to let users copy and share entire songs primarily facilitates infringement rather than adds something new or transformative. Since it reproduced and distributed copyrighted music and affected the rights holders’ market, the use did not meet the fair use criteria. So sharing music files through Napster was not fair use.