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Napster
Music Piracy and Lawsuits
By: David K. Every
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2002-03-12 06:36:13
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 P3 is basically a format to store and playback music files on your computer. Lately there has been a lawsuit in the press about MP3’s and Napster. So who/what is Napster?
In 1999 a Northeastern University Freshman named Shawn Fanning decided to hack together a program (called Napster) to allow people to share files across the Internet.
Now everyone could already share files across the Internet before Napster, but they couldn't easily find them. How would you know that I was sharing files that you might have interest in? I could call you, and give the address of my machine (kept in cryptic IP numbers as the address) and you could "call" my machine and get the information. But if you didn't have my address or machines number to begin with, you could never find me. Think of it as if I had a phone number or your home address (in computerese) - I have a phone number whether you know it or not, but what you care about is that you can find it (assuming you want to call me).
Shawn figured that if he created a centralized website (database) that kept an index of numbers, name and descriptions of what people were sharing, then people could use this to search for, and find, files that other people were sharing from their home computers (servers).
Think of Napster as sort of a phone directory (white or yellow pages) - you type in what you had interest in, and Napster would give you back the places that might have what you wanted.
To say interest in this little program was explosive was an understatement. Napster popularity was instant, and it spread at a speed that only the Internet provided. Hundreds of thousands of copies of the program were downloaded, then millions. Everyone and their kids were using Napster. Of course Ventured Capitalists came in and helped Napster the company (with Shawn as the founder).
Remember, this only started in 1999, and already you have a multi-million dollar company -- and a couple of industry lawsuits and new laws being written because of it, and so on. This is the speed and power of Internet business - going from zero market, to millions of users (and millions of dollars in business) seemingly overnight.
The facts are there were thousands of things you could use this simple concept / program for -- most of them legal. But part of the problem was how Napster was used, and arguably what it was really created for -- which was music piracy.
While the idea behind Napster was to lookup and share files across the Internet, specifically, the type of files that people wanted to look up and share were music files or songs / albums (MP3's). But that brings up some serious copyright and intellectual property issues, since the artists or record companies own the rights to these songs (not the people sharing them). Thus the "Record Companies" started a lawsuit to try to put Napster (and the piracy that Napster was being used for), out of business. They mostly succeeded. But putting a stop to information exchange across the Internet is like trying to put a Genie back in a bottle - you can't unlearn things, and once the flow of information has started, it is soon an unstoppable torrent. And the genie is out of this bottle, and people are sharing their songs, whether Napster exists or not. 
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