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The copyright holders were worried about kids who were pirating games, software, music and videos and traded them with others. The NET was designed to fill certain gaps in the U.S. Copyright Act, as it relates to online copyright infringement and use of copyrighted materials online. It allows criminal enforcement against people who have no profit motive in the infringement, such a teens who exchange computer codes for music, each acquired without license. The NET added three important provisions to the Copyright Act:
First "financial gain" was redefined to include the receipt of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works.

Prior to the enactment of the NET, a case called U.S. v. LaMacchia set the standards for receipt of value. La Macchia was a computer bulletin board operator who published copyrighted works online. Because there was no profit motive, the court had to dismiss the criminal action for copyright infringement. (The law, prior to the NET amendment required a profit motive before anyone could be criminally prosecuted for copyright infringement, although they could be civilly prosecuted even if no profit motive existed.) The addition of the definition of financial gain to include "anything of value" now allows criminal prosecution of online copyright infringement, even by people sharing copyrighted software or games online. It was designed to address the problems identified by software manufacturers and publishers of copyrighted work, which is commonly infringed online, in particular the infringement by teenagers.

Second, the NET criminalizes the willful reproduction or distribution (during a 180-day period), through electronic or other means, one or more copies of a copyrighted work with an aggregate retail value of more than $1,000.

This means that even if there is no profit motive and no receipt of anything of value, even other software or copyrighted material, someone can be criminally prosecuted if the total retail value of the reproduction or distribution exceeds $1000. (This applies even if someone merely sends several copies of pirated software to friends online)

Third, the NET extended the statute of limitations on criminal copyright infringement from three to five years and increases the penalties and fines for criminal copyright infringement, generally. 

While the prosecutors are not rushing to file criminal copyright actions against kids, parents and their children need to understand that downloading music in large enough quantities may be more serious than subjecting them to lawsuits. It may subject them to criminal prosecution as well.

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