Napster

Napster was the first widely successful and popular music file sharing service similar to today's peer to peer software except more (or completely) centralized. Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker created Napster as a way to use software to link computers and allow people to share their MP3 music files which was, by and large, copyright law protected music. Napster was originally free for people to download and use and they could openly trade and share any MP3 music file they had on their computer system.

Napster was the first time that music piracy was being committed online on such a major scale. Napster was an early peer to peer model because the music files were exchanged directly and not stored on a common server. Napster was highly successful and popular except it was short lived. Napster was quickly shut down after lawsuits filed by Metallica and Dr. Dre and a separate lawsuit in regards to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The software tool and web site Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker created basically allowed visitors or users to use a search engine that was specific to MP3 music. The search engine knew of all the MP3 music every user had and how to connect those that wanted a song to those that had it seamlessly with just a click of the mouse. The Napster utility logged the user onto a central server. This server kept an index of the Napster users currently connected but did not store any music files.

When Napster users searched for a specific song, the software queried the index server for other online Napster computers that had the requested song and returned a list of users that were sharing the file. The Napster software on the person's computer doing the search attempted to establish a connection with the computer hosting the file the user selected. If the connection was successful, the file began downloading directly to the user’s computer and once complete the connection immediately terminated.

• A database of who had the song file was kept on a central server
• The song file itself was never on the central server, but on individual user's own computers

The legal defense of Napster owners was simple, they stated that they never had possession of the music files. They said they basically just had information on where the music files were and they provided it as a directory, like a phone book.

Napster was a way for people to avoid paying for music. Royalties did not exist within Napster as neither artists nor record labels profited. Rather than go to the record store and buy a popular music album with several songs they didn’t like people now downloaded only their favorite songs straight to their computer. The sound quality of the MP3 format was near compact disc quality and most users couldn't tell the difference. It was questionably reported that in the year 2000 total recording sales decreased by 33% due to black market music trading including Napster. By the end of 2000, Napster had an estimate of 75 million users worldwide.

Fearing an impact on potential sales from internet piracy, industry associations like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) lobbied for stricter laws and more severe punishments of those breaking copyright law. Record companies have also turned to technological barriers to copying, such as Digital Rights Management (DRM). Critics of the record companies' strategy have proposed that the attempts to maintain sales rates are impeding the rights of legitimate listeners to use and listen to the music as they wish.

The RIAA, a powerful lobby for the recording industry, is responsible for carrying out most of the lawsuits against music piracy in the United States. Napster was shut down in 2001 due to the RIAA and the court mandated Napster shut down the accounts of servers who still uploaded and shared these copyrighted files, effectively ending all trade. The legacy of Napster was the industry realization that digital media is the wave of the future. Services such as iTunes and Amazon Music exist today as an answer to providing digital music with the option of ala carte selection in a legal and commercial way.