The rise and fall of Napster

With a single program written in 1999, a computer science student at Northeastern University, 18, called Shawn Fanning, without knowing it, would forever transform the way people use the Internet. The name of his program was Napster. Nicknamed by his teenage nickname due to his diaper hair, Napster was a free downloadable program that could transform individual computers into servers that shared MP3 music files on the Internet. Instead of a central server where all music files were stored, Napster functioned as a medium. Users can log in to Napster, search for an artist or song title, and then proceed to download directly from the hard drive of another connected user. In just over a year after its initial launch, Napster soon became one of the most notorious and very popular sites in Internet history. At its peak, Napster was promoting a grand total of about 60 million users worldwide (Collins, 2002). Little did Fanning realize that his creation would soon become as ubiquitous on the Internet as email and instant messaging. Nor did Fanning realize the legal storm that his creation would eventually create. Finally, what began as a simple written program for his friends to share music soon caught the attention not only of young people around the world, but also of the anger of the record industry.

Napster’s story begins just south of Boston in the city of Brockton, Massachusetts. Colleen Fanning, 17, was in the last year of high school in 1980. One night, his older brother organized a party to celebrate his graduation and hired a local band called “MacBeth” to play at the party. It was a resounding success, with about 3,000 people crowding the house. Colleen’s younger brother, John, left with a hat to raise money to pay for the band and win a couple of greats at the end of the night, his first business experience. That same night, the Fannings say, Colleen got hooked with one of the musicians and ended up pregnant. With his father’s support, Colleen stayed with his baby and called him Shawn. However, Shawn’s biological father, who turned out to be the son of one of the richest families in Massachusetts, was rescued. Finally, Colleen ended up marrying a former marine who was driving a delivery truck to a local bakery. His name was Raymond Verrier. The couple had four more children, and Colleen looked after them all while her husband worked. “Money was always a very big problem,” Shawn said in an article from the 2000 Business Week. He added: “There was a lot of tension around that” (Ante, 2000).

Shawn grew up near public housing projects in Brockton. At that moment, Verrier could see that his son, who was already shy, was withdrawing from the chaos of the city center that surrounded him constantly. “He went deep inside and said,” I want to get out of this. “Although it meant losing him a little, is what he wanted for him, “said Verrier, who worked as a nursing assistant. As Shawn grew, Verrier turned to his brother John, a businessman, to help guide his son. As an incentive to learn, for every “A” he brought home from school, his uncle John Fanning gave him money. He also bought an Apple Macintosh computer from his nephew for which Verrier could never have had the money (Menn, 2003). However, Shawn’s life in Fanning’s house was constantly getting worse. The relationship between his parents finally ended when his mother and stepfather separated. For a year, Shawn and his brothers were forced to live in a foster home (Ante, 2000). However, Shawn’s entrepreneurial uncle, John Fanning, was always there to offer support to his young nephew. Shawn worked summers as an intern in the Chess.net division at his uncle John’s internet company, NetGames, in the nearby town of Hull. There, Shawn became quite skilled at programming fellow interns studying computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. However, even though John had a personal interest in his nephew, Shawn was reluctant to absorb his uncle’s attentive work ethic. Shawn had difficulty completing tasks and, instead, often concentrated on playing video games. “I was starting to program, so I spent a lot of time playing with projects and hanging out,” said Shawn (Ante, 2000). However, also during this time Shawn learned what would soon become noticeable, the MP3 digital music files (Menn, 2003).

Shortly after graduating from Harwich High School in 1998, Shawn enrolled at nearby Northeastern University. What would eventually become Napster was created in Fanning’s roommate’s first-year bedroom at Northeastern University. After hearing his roommate’s complaints of finding nothing but dead links for MP3 music files with conventional search engines like Lycos and Yahoo!, Shawn sought an easier alternative. His idea was simple. I wanted to combine conventional Internet ease of use with file transfer technology similar to the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) network. Shawn knew that there should be a way to combine the breadth of search engines like Google with the “presence awareness” of systems such as instant messaging, who know who logged in at a given time (Menn, 2003). This was combined with the option for individual users to choose which files could be shared with others while connected to the Napster network. These innovative elements of the program and the Napster network finally eliminated the problems associated with dead links. In addition, by having all users store their music on their own computers, electronic pipes would not be obstructed if the new system only connected a couple of people and then stopped connecting to them (Menn, 2003). Finally, a feature was added to these elements that allowed Napster users online to chat with each other in real time.

Shawn left Northeastern in January 1999 to devote all his time to perfecting his invention. According to former Chess.net colleague, Tarek Loubani, he has rarely seen someone so focused. “I don’t think people can appreciate how hard it worked,” said Loubani (Menn, 2003). Just vaguely remember that stage in mid-1999, unable to remember exact months, weeks or days. Among the only memories he has of that time is hunched over his Dell laptop, writing the code and dozing on the sofa or the floor of his uncle John. Fearful that a software company will present a similar product before him, he obsessively wrote all of Napster’s source code in 60 hours straight (Greenfeld, 2000). In May 1999, Shawn’s uncle, John, incorporated the company as Napster. John Fanning would retain a 70% stake in the corporation, while nephew Shawn would only retain a 30% stake in the corporation. The justification offered by Uncle John was that Shawn desperately needed an experienced businessman like him to handle the nuances of running the business. (Menn, 2003).

The news spread quickly through the Northeastern University campus as soon as his former classmate Shawn had a preliminary beta program from Napster ready to try on June 1, 1999. Soon, hundreds of college students were busy exchanging music. This revolutionary new file-sharing service quickly became the buzz between the bulletin boards and chat rooms that frequent Internet literature. The Napster network was growing and growing at a rapid pace. Given the prospect of unprecedented popularity in such a short period of time, the Fannings set out to raise capital for additional bandwidth and servers. The company moved from Hull, Massachusetts to San Mateo, California, to a more spacious place and hired additional workers. The additional capital investment in Napster arrived just in time. Napster became so popular that some university campuses were experiencing servers clogged by the number of students using Napster alone. Schools like Pennsylvania State University in 1999 issued a moratorium on the use of Napster on campus computers and Internet connections in an attempt to alleviate the problem. Napster’s problems were just beginning.

The notoriety finally caught the attention of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The RIAA filed a lawsuit against Napster on December 7, 1999, alleging copyright infringement. In addition, the RIAA wanted compensation of $ 10,000 for each copyrighted song marketed through the Napster network. The unprecedented demand attracted a lot of media attention and boosted Napster’s popularity even more, particularly among university students. Growing crowds of young people flocked to Napster to exchange music, and the community soon promoted millions of members around the world. At any time during this period, there would be millions of users online, exchanging hundreds of thousands of songs.

Later, during the spring of 2000, the heavy metal band Metallica learned that an unpublished study of their song “I Disappear” had leaked and was being marketed in Napster. The result was that the single was heard on numerous radio stations throughout the United States. Metallica was determined to discover how the song spread so much. The obvious culprit was Napster. On April 13, 2000, a lawsuit was filed for copyright infringement. After hiring the PDNet consultant, Metallica soon discovered that during a weekend in April 2000, more than 335,000 individual Napster users were exchanging their music online. On May 3, 2000, Napster received 60,000 pages of usernames that allegedly exchanged copyrighted songs from Metallica through the Napster network. Metallica demanded that Napster ban 335,000 users from exchanging its copyrighted material, and Napster agreed. Napster’s lawyer, Laurence Pulgram, said: “Napster has taken extraordinary measures to comply with Metallica’s demands to prevent hundreds of thousands of its fans from using the Napster system.” He added: “Napster has always stated that it would act in response to the notification of copyright holders, and has fulfilled that commitment in good faith.” (Dansby and Uhelszki, 2000).

On May 5, 2000, Napster received a fatal legal blow. The judge of the United States District Court, Marilyn Hall Patel, ruled that Napster was not entitled to the status of “safe harbor” under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1992. Napster’s original defense in his lawsuit of RIAA was that it was included in section 1008. This section of the Law explicitly stated that:

“No action may be taken under this title alleging copyright infringement [1] based on the manufacture, importation or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device or an analog recording medium, or [2] based on the non-commercial use by a consumer of said device or means for making digital music recordings or analog music recordings. “

The Court determined that Napster users were involved in a widespread violation of copyright. In addition, the ruling also stated that Napster is “responsible and vicariously responsible for its actions.” The exclusion under Section 1008 of the AHRA was not applicable here, because the Law provides immunity only against non-commercial copies and not public distribution. The Napster network was made up of more than 20 million people. Therefore, each time a user logged on to the network and shared the contents of their hard drive, that user distributed copyrighted material to the masses. Section 1008 of AHRA deals with reproduction and not with the distribution of copyrighted material. Therefore, according to the court, Napster users were violating copyright infringement and Napster was facilitating copyright infringement. Judge Patel agreed to the request of the RIAA for a preliminary injunction and ordered the closure of the site on July 26, 2000.

Meanwhile, Napster appealed the ruling on October 2, 2000. Napster’s appeal was lost on February 12, 2001. An offer of $ 1 billion from Napster to reach an out-of-court settlement with the record industry was rejected shortly. . On March 5, 2001, the Ninth Circuit Court ordered Napster to stop the trade in copyrighted material on its network. As a result, Napster began using filters in its search engine. The Napster system completely blocked any artist or song title that was copyrighted from user searches. Popular artists and song titles no longer appeared in search results. As a result, Napster smart users bypassed the filters by incorrectly writing the artist or the song title on their hard drives. Napster users could still download copyrighted music. As a result, Napster completely closed its entire network in July 2001 to fully comply with the court order. On September 24, 2001, Napster reached an agreement with the copyright holders in the amount of $ 26 million for the illegal use of music, and $ 10 million in advance to cover the impending royalty agreements. Napster announced on May 17, 2002 an agreement with Germany’s Bertelsmann AG. The agreement would allow the development of a subscriber-based Napster form with the Bertelsmann AG music catalog, in exchange for the German company withdrawing its claim against Napster. However, on June 3, 2001, Napster declared bankruptcy under Chapter 11. The sale to Bertelsmann AG was blocked, and Napster was forced to dispose of its remaining assets.

The current legal incarnation of Napster is like a subscriber-based payment service. Roxio bought Napster’s assets at auction in 2002. According to Wikipedia (2005), a monthly charge of $ 9.95 is charged to members who can rent songs provisionally, with the option to pay between $ 0.80 and an additional $ 0.90 to download songs permanently. While the new Napster has only a fraction of the popularity of the old Napster, others have filled the void in the world of peer-to-peer file sharing. Popular services like Kazaa, Limewire and Morpheus use the technology that Shawn Fanning made infamous. However, when the original Napster had a central server, these services depend on the direct connection with other network users. They are inherently more difficult to regulate for copyright infringement and equally almost impossible to stop.

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