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With one program written in 1999, a 18-year-old Northeastern University computer science student named Shawn Fanning would unwittingly forever change the way people use the internet. The name of his program was Napster. Dubbed after his teenage nickname because of his nappy hair, Napster was a free downloadable program that could convert individual computers servers as part MP3 music files over the network. Rather than a central server where all music files were stored, Napster instead worked as a medium. Users could log in to Napster, search an artist or song title, and then proceed to download directly from your hard drive a logged in user. In little more than a year after the initial launch, Napster soon became one of the most notorious and wildly popular sites in internet history. At its peak, Napster was touting a grand total of about 60 million users worldwide (Collins, 2002). Little did Fanning realize that his brainchild would soon become as ubiquitous on the Internet as email and instant messaging. Nor little did Fanning realize the ensuing legal tempest that his creation would eventually create. In the end, what began as a simple program written for his friends to share music soon caught the attention of not only young people around the world, but also the ire of the recording industry.
The story of Napster begins just south of Boston in the city of Brockton, Massachusetts. A 17-year-old Colleen Fanning was a high school senior there in 1980. One night, her older brother threw a party celebrating his high school graduation and hired a local band “Macbeth” to play at the reception. It was a resounding success, with some 3,000 bullying house. Colleen’s younger brother John went around with a hat raising money to pay for the band and netting a few grand from the end of the night, the first entrepreneurial experience. The same evening, saying Found Coatings, Colleen hooked up with one of the musicians and ended up pregnant. With the support of his dad, Colleen kept her baby, and he named Shawn. However, the biological father of Shawn’s who happened to be the son of one of the richest families in Massachusetts took over. Colleen eventually ended up marrying a former Marine who drove a delivery truck for a local bakery. His name was Raymond Verrier. The couple had four more children, and Colleen took care of them all while her husband worked. “Money was always a pretty big issue,” Shawn said in a 2000 Business Week article. He added: “There was a lot of excitement around it” (Ante, 2000).
Shawn grew up near public housing projects in Brockton. At the time, Verrier saw her once-shy son was to reduce inner-city chaos constantly surrounding him, “he went inside himself real deep and said,” I want to get out of this. “Even though it meant losing him a little bit, that’s what I wanted for him,” said Verrier, employed then as a nurse’s aide. As Shawn grew older, Verrier turned to business-minded brother, John, to help guide his son. As an incentive to learn, for each “A” He came home from school his uncle John Fanning gave him money. He also bought his cousin Apple Macintosh computer that Verrier could never have money for (Men, 2003). Life Shawn Fanning household however was steadily worsening. The relationship between his parents finally culminated when his mother and stepfather had threatened. For the year Shawn and his siblings were forced to live in a foster home (Ante, 2000). Nevertheless, entrepreneurial uncle John Fanning Shawn was always there to offer support to young cousin. Shawn worked summers as an intern in the department Chess.net cousin John his internet business, NetGames nearby town of Hull. Since Shawn became quite deft at programming from fellow interns who were studying computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. But despite John take the interests of his nephew, Shawn was reluctant to heed his mother’s work ethic. Shawn had difficulty completing assignments and instead would often focus on playing video games. “I was just getting into programming, so I spent a lot of my time just fiddling with projects and hanging out,” Shawn said (Ante, 2000). It was also at this time though Shawn learned about what would soon make him notorious, MP3 digital music files (Men, 2003).
Soon after graduating from Harwich High School in 1998, Shawn enrolled at nearby Northeastern University. What would eventually become Napster was created in the freshman dorm room roommate Fanning at Northeastern University. After listening to the complaints his roommate finding nothing but dead links for MP3 music files with conventional search engines like Lycos and Yahoo!, Shawn looked for an easier choice. His idea was simple. He wanted to combine traditional ease of using the Internet with file transfer technology similar to Internet Relay Chat (IRC) network. Shawn knew that there should be a way to combine the width of the search engines like Google with “presence awareness” in the system as instant messaging, which know who is signed on at any time (Men, 2003). This was combined with the possibility of individual users choose which files could be shared with others while connected to the Napster network. These innovative elements Napster program and network finally eliminate the problems associated with dead links. In addition, by having all users store their music on their computers, electronic pipes would not clog if the new system connected to just a couple of people and then dropped its own connection to them (Men, 2003). Finally, add these elements was a feature that made online Napster users to chat amongst each other in real time.
Shawn way in the northeast in January 1999 to devote full time to perfect his invention. According Chess.net former colleague Tarek Loubani, he has never seen anyone so focused. “I do not think people can appreciate how hard he worked,” said Loubani (Men, 2003). He remembers only vaguely that level in mid-1999, unable to remember exactly months, weeks or days. Among the only memories he has of the time hunched over his Dell laptop computer, writing code and snoozing on the couch cousin John his or height. Afraid of having a software company introduced a similar product for him, he wrote obsessively all the source code of Napster in 60 straight hours (Greenfeld, 2000). In May 1999, the cousin Shawn John incorporated the company as Napster. John Fanning would retain 70% of the company while his nephew Shawn would only retain 30% of the company. Arguments offered by Uncle John was that Shawn desperately needed a seasoned businessman like him to deal with the nuances of running a business. (Men, 2003).
Word spread quickly about the Northeastern campus as soon as a former classmate of Shawn had a preliminary beta program of Napster ready for testing 1. June 1999. Soon hundreds of high school students were busy trading music. This new revolutionary file sharing service quickly became a buzz among the internet literati frequenting bulletin boards and chat rooms. The Napster network was growing and it was growing at a brisk pace. Faced with the prospect of unprecedented popularity within such a short time, found Ings set out to raise capital for additional bandwidth and server. The company moved from Hull, Massachusetts to San Mateo, California to a more spacious location and hired additional staff. The additional investment in Napster came just in time. Napster became so popular that some college campuses were experiencing clogged up servers from the amount of students with Napster one. Schools like Pennsylvania State University in 1999 issued the authorization to use Napster on campus computers and Internet Connections in an attempt to alleviate the problem. Napster’s woes were only beginning.
The fame eventually caught the attention of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The RIAA filed a lawsuit against Napster December 7, 1999, alleging copyright infringement. Furthermore, the RIAA would add $ 10,000 for every single copyrighted song traded across the Napster network. Countless lawsuit attracted much media attention and further propelled the popularity of Napster, especially with college students. Growing horde of young men flocked to Napster to swap music and community soon touted millions of members worldwide. At any time during this period, there would be millions of users online, trading hundreds of thousands of songs.
Later in the spring of 2000, the heavy metal band Metallica learned that an unreleased studio outtakes of the song of “I disappear” had been leaked and was shopping at Napster. The result was that one heard on numerous radio stations across America. Metallica was determined to find out how the song became so widely distributed. The obvious culprit was Napster. A copyright infringement lawsuit was filed on 13 April 2000. After hiring consulting PDNet, Metallica quickly discovered that on one weekend in April 2000, the 335,000 individual Napster users were trading their music online. On May 3, 2000 Napster introduced with 60,000 pages of users who had allegedly traded copyrighted Metallica songs over the Napster network. Metallica demanded that Napster ban the 335,000 users for trading copyrighted content, and Napster agreed. Napster attorney Laurence Pulgram stated, “Napster has taken extraordinary measures to comply with Metallica to close hundreds of thousands of its fans from using the Napster system.” He further added, “Napster has always stated that it was something in response to notice from the rights, and it has been the commitment in good faith.” (Dansby & Uhelszki, 2000).
On 5 May 2000, Napster had a fatal legal blow. US District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled that Napster was not entitled to “safe harbor” status under the 1992 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The original defense Napster in RIAA suit her was that it was included in Section 1008. This section of the Act clearly states that:
“No action may be brought under this title alleging copyright [1] based on the production, importation, or distribution digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recorder, or an analog recording medium, or [2] based on the intended consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings. “
The court found that Napster users were engaged in widespread copyright infringement. Furthermore, the ruling also stated that Napster is “contributorily and vicariously liable for their actions.” Exclusion under section 1008 of the Ahrar was applied here, because the law provides immunity only from copying and not intended for public distribution. The Napster network was composed of over 20 million people. , The user was distributed, each time a user was logged into the network and share their hard drive copyrighted material to the masses. Section 1008 of the Ahram discusses the reproduction and distribution of copyrighted material not. According to the court, Napster users were in violation of copyright infringement and the Napster was facilitating copyright infringement. Judge Patel granted the RIAA request for a preliminary injunction and the site was ordered shut down on July 26, 2000.
In the meantime, Napster appealed the judgment on October 2, 2000. The Napster appeal was lost on February 12, 2001 . Offer of $ 1 billion from Napster to settle out of court with the recording industry was shortly rejected. On March 5, 2001, the Ninth Circuit Court ordered Napster to stop the trading of copyrighted content on the Internet. As a result, Napster began to use filters to search again. The Napster system completely blocked any artist or song title that was copyrighted by searchers. Popular artists and song titles were no longer showing up in search results. Consequently, clever users of Napster circumvented the filters by intentionally misspelling the artist or song title on their hard drives. Napster users might still be able to download copyrighted music. As a result, Napster completely shut down the entire network in July 2001 to fully comply with a court injunction. September 24, 2001, Napster up to beneficiaries to the tune of $ 26 million for the illegal use of music, and $ 10 million up front to cover impending royalty agreements. Napster announced on May 17, 2002 agreement with Germany’s Bertelsmann AG. The agreement would allow subscribers based form of Napster to develop featuring the Bertelsmann AG music catalog, in exchange for the German company to drop its lawsuit against Napster. However, June 3, 2001 Napster collapsed under section 11 Sale of Bertelsmann AG was blocked, and Napster was forced to release its remaining assets.
current legal incarnation of Napster’s subscriber-based pay service. Roxio bought the Napster assets at auction in 2002. According to Wikipedia (2005) monthly fee of $ 9.95 is charged members that can provisionally rent songs, with the option of paying an extra $ 0.80 to $ 0.90 permanently download songs. While the new Napster has only a fraction of the popularity of the old Napster, others have filled the void in peer-to-peer file-sharing world. Popular services like Kazaa, LimeWire and Morpheus utilize the technology made famous Shawn Fanning. Yet where the original Napster had a central server, these services rely on to connect directly with other network users. They are inherently more difficult to control for copyright infringement as well as nearly impossible to stop.
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