What Happened With Napster?
Napster was a famous file-sharing operation, created by Shawn Fanning, that made it simple and easy for people to share MP3s with each other at no cost. The company grew to be a source of controversy when major artists issued legal challenges based on intellectual property arguments and copyright laws.
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Rise to Fame
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Napster became a major player in the music scene in 1999. Napster was first available for public use in June 1999. The owner, Fanning, wanted to create an easier way to share music on the Internet. It grew to be the first very popular such service on the web soon after it was created. Napster, at its peak, had 80 million users and 25 million songs. It never crashed once.
Legal Challenges
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In 2000, the heavy metal band Metallica became the first prominent artist to sue Napster. Soon other artists, such as Dr. Dre and Madonna, and record companies filed suit. They won when the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Napster to block access to copyrighted material.
Napster shut down in July 2001 and declared bankruptcy the following year. Napster had to pay acts and companies more than 26 million to compensate for past infringements. The company tried to stay alive as a subscription service but did not survive.
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Napster Aftermath
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With Napster, anyone with a computer and an Internet connection could listen to music free of charge. The name and logo for Napster have been in use since 2002. Originally it was purchased by Private Media Group, which offered a paid service. In September 2008, Best Buy purchased the company for $121 million.
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