Napster

The program, and later company, named Napster, has brought about a historical debate concerning copyright law and the Internet. Napster’s is a free Internet music file-sharing program that allows users to quickly and easily swap files with one another directly, without the use of a centralized file server. Its software aims to make finding MP3 files easier on the Internet. No files are actually hosted on Napster servers as Napster provides access to music files on others' computers. This system of computers is called peer-to-peer networking. In addition to its search features, Napster contains three major components: 1) A chat program that allows users to chat with each other in rooms based on music genre. 2) An audio player that plays MP3 files from right inside Napster in the event that users do not have an external player or prefer not to use one. 3) A tracking program that allows users to keep track of their favorite MP3 libraries for later browsing.

Napster was the brainchild of, at the time, nineteen-year-old college student, Shawn Fanning, at Northeastern University in Boston. Throughout his life, Fanning had two loves: one was sports and the other was computers. Over time his curiosity for computers grew and sports became less important, concentrating most of his time working with computers, primarily focusing on two aspects of the computer, programming and the Internet. During his freshman year at Northeastern University, in 1998, Fanning was trying to enter computer science classes higher than the entry level (Jones, 2001, 1A). Not finding anything challenging about the courses he was enrolled in, Fanning decided to start writing a Windows based program in his spare time. He spent most of his time in chat rooms talking with experienced computer networking programmers. Fanning thought-up the general idea of, what is now known as, Napster from his roommate who loved music files, most commonly known as MP3’s, but was frustrated with most music sites which had limited music files available and detested having to endlessly search website’s looking for particular songs. Fanning, keeping his roommate’s frustrations in mind, and his programming skills at hand, began writing Napster. He used the idea of all users being connected to one central computer server, and having access to each other’s music files that users wished to share (“MTV News,” 2000, 1). In other words, “Napster makes its application software freely available for download by consumers from its website.