History

“What began in 1999 as an idea in the head of a teenager has redefined the Internet, the music industry, and the way we all think about intellectual property” (Tyson, n.d. ). Napster basically pioneered the concept of peer-to-peer file sharing. This approach served as the most logical and effective solution to allowing many users to share music with each other, because of the way the infrastructure of the Internet works. On the Internet, web servers hold data and information and process requests for information. Web browsers allow users to connect to servers and view information or retrieve files. Bigger websites with lots of traffic usually have to buy many machines and other equipment to support the requests from its users.

Initially, Napster provided users with a reasonable amount of songs, eventually growing to having millions of songs available. Napster attempted to exploit a loophole in copyright law which supposedly allowed friends to share music with friends. This loophole was known as the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) of 1992. The Audio Recording Act of 1992 requires all digital recording devices to contain a system which allows the digital recorders to make a first-generation copy of a digitally recorded work, but does not allow a second-generation copy to be made from the first copy (U.S. Copyright Office, 2003).

The AHRA also requires manufacturers to pay a tax, which is distributed to copyright owners whose intellectual property is supposedly being copied, in exchange for copyright holders waiving their right to claim copyright infringement against the manufacturers and consumers of these digital recording devices ( Duke L. & Tech. Rev., 2002; Microsoft ® Encarta Reference Library 2004, 2003b ; U.S. Copyright Office, 2003). Napster’s legal concept behind the AHRA was, "All of these people are sharing the songs on their hard disks with their friends." However, the courts did not agree with Napster’s logic, but they still were given enough time to try and prove the concept, while they continued to grow in size (Brain, n.d.(a)).

With Napster, individuals could store digital files they wanted to share on the hard drives of their computers and share them with many people throughout the world. Napster allowed users who ran the Napster software to basically turn their computers into mini servers. Because of this, Napster had a large collection of mini servers at its disposal, and these servers enabled Napster to create a large database of music files, which were extremely easy to access and use. In order for a user to provide a song to Napster, all s/he would need was a copy of the Napster software installed on his/her computer, a directory (or folder) on the computer which would serve as a shared file for others to access, an Internet connection, and a copy of the song they wanted to share, usually in the MP3 format.

To search for a song in Napster, a user had to run the Napster program, which would search for an Internet connection and log the user into the Napster central server if a connection was present. The Napster central server did not contain any MP3 files, as it merely served as an index of all the Napster users who were online at any particular time, and connected them to each other. After being connected to Napster, a user could type in the title or artist of the song s/he was looking for and the Napster software would then search the server for other Napster computers online which had the song the user had requested.

Whenever a match to a user’s search was found, the Napster server informed the user’s computer where to find the requested file. Napster’s server accomplished this by creating a list of the results of every shared song available on every hard disk connected to Napster at any particular time, which met the user’s search criteria. A user could then click on the file s/he wished to download and the Napster software would attempt to establish a connection with the system hosting the file. If a connection was successful, the file would begin to download directly from the other user’s computer. Once the download was complete, the user had the complete MP3 file on his/her computer.

“Napster became so popular so quickly because it offered a unique product -- free music you could obtain nearly effortlessly from a gigantic database. You no longer had to go to the music store to get music. You no longer had to pay for it. You no longer had to worry about cuing up a CD and finding a cassette to record it onto. And nearly every song in the universe was available” (Brain, n.d.(a)).

But Napster’s key weakness existed in the way the architecture of the system was designed. “The central database for song titles was Napster's Achilles' heel” (Brain, n.d. (a)). At its peak, Napster was perhaps the most popular website ever created. In less than a year, it went from zero to 60 million visitors per month, but was shut down by a court order because of copyright violations (Brain, n.d. (a)). When the Napster central server was shut down the entire Napster network died because user’s computers had no way of communicating with one another.