Napster
:
For Napster, Inc. (formerly Roxio), and the paid Napster music service see Napster (pay service). |
Second version (revised 2001) of Napster logo: Cat wearing headphones. |
Napster is an online music service which was originally a
file sharing service created by
Shawn Fanning. Napster was the first widely-used
peer-to-peer (or P2P) music sharing service, and it made a major impact on how people, especially
university students, used the
Internet. Its technology allowed music fans to easily share
MP3 format song files with each other, thus leading to the music industry's accusations of massive
copyright violations. Although the original service was shut down by court order, it paved the way for decentralized P2P file-sharing programs such as
Kazaa,
Limewire, and
BearShare, which have been much harder to control. Napster continues to live on with pay services today. The popularity and repercussions of the first Napster have made it a legendary icon in the computer and entertainment fields.
Shawn Fanning along with volunteer
Sean Parker first released the original Napster in June of
1999 while Fanning was attending
Northeastern University in Boston. Fanning wanted an easier method of finding music than by searching
IRC or
Lycos. John Fanning of
Hull, Massachusetts, who is Shawn's uncle, struck an agreement which gave Shawn 30% control of the company, with the rest going to his uncle. Napster began to build an office and executive team in San Mateo, California, in September of 1999. Napster was the first of the massively popular peer-to-peer file sharing systems, although it was not fully peer-to-peer since it used central servers to maintain lists of connected systems and the files they provided - directories, effectively - while actual transactions were conducted directly between machines. Although there were already media which facilitated the sharing of files across the Internet, such as IRC,
Hotline, and
USENET, Napster specialized exclusively in music in the form of MP3 files and presented a user-friendly interface. The result was a system whose popularity generated an enormous selection of music to download.
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A screenshot of Napster V2.0 Beta 7 (about half-way through Napster's life). |
Although the recording industry denounced music sharing as equivalent to theft, many Napster users felt justified in using the service for a number of reasons. Some believed that the quality of new albums had decreased by the mid-1990s, with the typical bestselling album containing only one or two good songs bundled with many low-quality "filler" songs. Additionally, the price per track had greatly increased as an increase in the overall price of CDs was coupled with a decrease in the number of tracks included with each CD. People praised Napster because it enabled them to obtain hit songs without having to buy an entire album. Napster also made it relatively easy for music enthusiasts to download copies of songs that were otherwise difficult to obtain, like older songs, unreleased recordings, and songs from concert
bootleg recordings. Some users felt justified in downloading digital copies of recordings they had already purchased in other formats, like
LP and
cassette tape, before the
compact disc emerged as the dominant format for music recordings.
Irrespective of these justifications, many other users simply enjoyed trading and downloading music for free. With the files obtained through Napster, people frequently made their own compilation albums on
recordable CDs, without paying any royalties to the copyright holder (which was usually one of the big record labels). High-speed networks in college dormitories became overloaded, with as much as 80% of external network traffic consisting of MP3 file transfers. Many colleges blocked its use for this reason, even before concerns about liability for facilitating copyright violations on campus. As a partial solution to this issue, Napster was used as a test case for
Internet2, the educational Internet backbone.
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Napster peaked in February 2001 |
Heavy metal band
Metallica discovered that a demo of their song "I Disappear" had been circulating across the Napster network, even before it was released. This eventually led to the song being played on several
radio stations across America. This brought to their attention that their entire back catalogue of studio material was also available. The band responded in
2000 by filing a
lawsuit against the Napster service. A month later, rapper
Dr. Dre, who shared a litigator and legal firm with Metallica, filed a similar lawsuit after Napster wouldn't remove his works from their service after he issued a written request. Separately, both Metallica and Dr. Dre later delivered thousands of usernames to Napster who they believed were pirating their songs. Metallica asked their group of users to be banned from the service, while Dr. Dre again asked for his songs to be removed from the service. All users who were on the list of either artist were banned. Napster complied with Metallica's request, but not Dr. Dre's; both the suits continued. A year after they began, Napster settled both lawsuits, but this came after being shut down by the Ninth Circuit Court in a separate lawsuit from several major record labels (see below).
Also in 2000,
Madonna, who had previously met with Napster executives to discuss a possible partnership, became irate when her
single "Music" leaked out on to the web and Napster prior to its commercial release, causing widespread media coverage.
Verified Napster use peaked with 26.4 million users worldwide in
February 2001; however, former employees contend that the service had at least 40 million users in June of 2000.
[Jupiter Media Metrix (July 20, 2001). Global Napster Usage Plummets, But New File-Sharing Alternatives Gaining Ground. Press Release.]At the time, the lawsuits were opposed by Napster users and supporters. To them, it seemed that file sharing was inevitable on the Internet
[Ghosemajumder, Shuman. Advanced Peer-Based Technology Business Models. P2P Industry Model from MIT, 2002.], and it was not Napster's fault that people used the service to share copyrighted files. These users viewed Napster as a simple search engine. Many argued that any attempt to shut down Napster would simply lead to people using a different medium to exchange files over the Internet. Similarly, many supporters of Napster were concerned about the media's constant use of the word "site" to describe the service, a word which seems to imply that Napster was distributing files itself rather than facilitating their exchange.
Napster's facilitation of illegal activity raised the ire of several major
recording companies, who almost immediately — in December
1999 — filed a
lawsuit against the popular service.
[A & M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., 114 F. Supp. 2d 896 (N.D. Cal. 2000), aff'd in part, rev'd in part, 239 F.3d 1004 (9th Cir. 2001)] The service would only get bigger as the trial, meant to shut down Napster, also gave it a great deal of publicity. Soon millions of users, many of them college students, flocked to it.
After a failed appeal to the
Ninth Circuit Court, an injunction was issued on
March 5,
2001 ordering Napster to prevent the trading of copyrighted music on its network.
[2001 US Dist. LEXIS 2186 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 5, 2001), aff'd, 284 F. 3d 1091 (9th Cir. 2002).] In
July 2001, Napster shut down its entire network in order to comply with the injunction. On
September 24,
2001, the case was partially settled. Napster agreed to pay music creators and copyright owners a $26 million settlement for past, unauthorized uses of music, as well as an advance against future licensing royalties of $10 million. In order to pay those fees, Napster attempted to convert their free service to a subscription system. A prototype solution was tested in the spring of 2002: the Napster 3.0 Alpha, using audio fingerprinting technology licensed from
Relatable. Napster 3.0 was, according to many former Napster employees, ready to deploy, but it had significant trouble obtaining licenses to distribute major-label music.
On
May 17,
2002, Napster announced that its assets would be acquired by German media firm
Bertelsmann for $8 million. Pursuant to terms of that agreement, on
June 3 Napster filed for
Chapter 11 protection under
United States bankruptcy laws. On
September 3,
2002, an American bankruptcy judge blocked the sale to Bertelsmann and forced Napster to liquidate its assets according to Chapter 7 of the U.S. bankruptcy laws.
Most of the Napster staff were laid off, and the website changed to display "Napster was here".
With all the accusations that Napster was destroying the record industry there were those who felt just the opposite, that file trading on Napster actually stimulated, rather than hurt, sales. Proof may have come in July 2000 when tracks from
Radiohead's album
Kid A found their way to Napster three months before the CD's release. Unlike Madonna, Radiohead had never hit the top 20 in the US. Furthermore, it was an experimental album that received little traditional promotion and almost no radio airplay. As MP3 Newswire described,
it was a perfect vehicle to test this theory as the effect of Napster was isolated from other elements that could be credited for driving sales.
By the time of the record's release
Kid A had been downloaded by millions of people worldwide. The record industry braced for the worst, but then came the big surprise.
Kid A not only broke the top 20, it captured the number one spot on the charts in its debut week. The record beat out the CDs of some of the most heavily marketed artists of the time including
Madonna and
Eminem. In the absence of any other force that could account for this success, Richard Menta of MP3 Newswire declared this was proof that Napster was a promotional power.
After a $2.4 million takeover offer by the
Private Media Group, an "adult entertainment company",
Napster's brand and logos were acquired at bankruptcy auction by the company
Roxio, Inc. which used them to rebrand the
pressplay music service as
Napster 2.0.
As of 2005, this new service has met with moderate success.
Although the central servers used by Napster made it a convenient legal target, the record industry failed to capitalize on the power vacuum left in its wake. The years between Napster's demise and the emergence of the
iTunes Music Store as the first popular pay-service were squandered as the five major labels failed to agree on a single service or standard for online distribution, launching several mutually incompatible subscription services such as pressplay and
MusicNet.
[Dube, Ric. (February 2002). MusicNet, PressPlay Fall Short. Ice Magazine, (179).]In the meantime, the
peer-to-peer filesharing trend Napster started soon resumed, with new programs and networks picking up the torch. Unofficial Napster servers proliferated, aided by a program known as "Napigator", and a second generation of P2P protocols (including FastTrack and Gnutella) were quickly developed. Designed as decentralized networks, these have been much more challenging for copyright owners to pursue in the courts (see
MGM v. Grokster).
The ever-widening availability of
broadband has made file sharing even more prevalent, since increasing download speeds mean the distribution of entire movies and other large files is possible. An emerging and
cryptographically strong third generation of P2P protocols will likely be nearly impossible to interdict. In a very real sense,
Shawn Fanning can be called the man who opened a
Pandora's Box; his current venture is
SNOCAP, a service that facilitates legal P2P sharing.
In the 2003 remake of
The Italian Job, a flashback depicts Shawn Fanning (playing himself) stealing the program from a computer expert played by
Seth Green while the latter is napping, providing a humorous
folk etymology for the name (
nap for napping and
ster for stealing).
The suffix "-ster" has become a popular component of the brand names of many Internet products, suggesting a peer-to-peer model, such as
Grokster,
Aimster (later
Madster), and
Blubster. This has also been extended to
Friendster, a site which vaguely recalls Napster's community-building features.
[Abrams, Jonathan. SXSW Interactive Keynote Speech. South by Southwest festival. Austin, TX. March 16, 2004.]An episode of animated television series
Futurama,
I Dated a Robot, centres on the illegal distribution of robotic celebrity clones over the Internet. The organisation responsible for this was thought to be named "Nappster," a reference to Napster. It was later revealed, however, that the full name was "Kidnappster" with a piece of tapestry covering "Kid" from the logo.
John Titor, a purported time traveller from the year
2036, says that Napster is still distributing
music in his time.
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KaZaA*
LimeWire*
Morpheus (computer program)*
WinMX*
Napster (pay service)*
Napster Bad!*
Dmusic*
Napster, Inc. Website - Formerly
Roxio, Inc.
*
The Napster Experience - netnographic research on file-sharing as a form of gift giving
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Judge criticises both parties in Napster case*
Music Downloads: Pirates- or Customers?
