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INTRODUCTION
The ever evolving world wide web has made downloading music files via peer-to-peer networks so simple it has become a temptation hard to pass up. People may think that file sharing and downloading is harmless, but it is not. It is a form copyright infringement referred to as music piracy. Copyright is seen to protect the literary, musical (including sound recordings), geographic, or other artistic form in which the creator (or author) expresses intellectual concepts, with the key being originality.# Although music piracy has been made easier and more prevalent by the availability of the internet, it is not a new concept. Piracy, or ‘counterfeiting’, of musical, literary or artistic works has a deep history and dates back into early Europe where music, books, or plays were often copied, reproduced or translated with little thought or acknowledgement given to the creator of the works. Reproductions were often cheaper and more readily available, they spread knowledge and entertainment to countries who might not be able to afford the original works (such reasons still prevalent in today‘s society). It was the prevention of such widespread piracy that led to the development of international copyright regulations during the nineteenth century.#
Emerging technologies, particularly the internet, are having a significant impact on the piracy of intellectual property on a global scale and via global communications networks. Software programs such as Napster and Kazaa, the first in the major peer-to-peer (‘p2p’) file-sharing networks, have been downloaded by millions.# The ease and convenience of such programs has generated questions in the legal sphere as to whether file sharing in such a manner could be considered to be fair use, and who, if anyone, should be held liable for the multitudes of copyright infringements facilitated through this software. This paper will discuss the harmonisation of international copyright obligations,...