Napster

Napster is a music file distribution service (in MP3 format). It was the first major P2P sharing network created by Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning. Its popularity began in the year 2000. Its technology allowed music fans to easily share their MP3 collections with other users, prompting protests from copyright protection institutions.

The service is called Napster ('party boy') after Fanning's pseudonym (it is said that he used to party a lot).

The first version of Napster was released in late 1999. It was the first of the massively popular peer-to-peer file sharing systems, and it was a centralized network, using a main server to maintain the list of connected users and files shared by each of them. File transfers, however, were carried out between users without intermediaries.

In early 2000, several record companies filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Napster. This brought Napster enormous popularity and several million new users. Napster reached its peak with 26.4 million users in February 2001.

For Napster fans the trial was somewhat confusing. For them, file sharing was a feature of the Internet, not Napster, which simply acted as a search engine. Many argued that shutting down Napster would only encourage its users to migrate to other file-sharing systems. The latter actually happened, with software like Ares Galaxy, Audiogalaxy, Morpheus, Gnutella, Kazaa, Emule, LimeWire, and eDonkey2000.

In July 2001 a judge ordered the closure of the Napster servers to prevent further copyright infringement. By September 24, 2001, it had practically come to an end. Napster agreed to pay the record companies $26 million in damages and another $10 million for future licences.

Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich was the first celebrity to sue Napster for copyright.

On May 19, 2008, Napster announced the launch of the world's largest and most detailed MP3 store, with 6 million songs, at free.napster.com. The notice also indicated that all US download sales made with Napster will now be in MP3 format.

On December 1, 2011, Napster merged with Rhapsody and began operating in various countries in America and Europe as a new payment service.

It currently has an agreement with the cell phone company Movistar as a streaming service for Latin America, competing with other platforms such as Deezer, Claro Música and Spotify.

Origins

Shawn Fanning along with three friends he met online; Jordan Ritter, his friend from Boston, Hugo Saez Contreras, his friend from South America, and Sean Parker, his childhood friend from Virginia, created Napster in June 1999. Fanning wanted an easier way to find music., instead of searching on IRC or Lycos. John Fanning, Shawn's uncle in Hull, Massachusetts, ran all of the company's operations during the period that they maintained their office in Nantasket Beach. The final agreement gave Shawn control over 30% of the company, with the rest going to his uncle. It was the first of the massively popular peer-to-peer distribution systems, although it was not fully peer-to-peer because it used central servers to keep a list of all connected systems and the files that were distributed, while the transactions were in fact carried out between the machines. Although there were already networks that facilitated the distribution of files over the Internet such as IRC, Hotline and USENET, Napster specialized directly in music in the form of MP3 files, presented through a user-friendly interface. The back-end system was designed by the main architect, Jordan Mendelson. The result was a system whose popularity spawned a huge selection of music to download.

Although the recording industry denounced the "sharing" music as tantamount to stealing, many Napster users felt justified in using the service for various reasons. Many believed that the quality of new albums had declined in the late 1990s, in the form of the typical best-seller album with only one or two songs, among several "filler" lower quality. At the same time, the cost of the blank CD had fallen immensely, but the price of CD albums remained constant. People praised Napster because it allowed them to get hit songs for free without having to buy an entire album. Napster also made it relatively easy for music enthusiasts to download copies of songs that would otherwise be difficult to obtain, such as old songs, undistributed recordings, and songs freely recorded at concerts. Some users justified downloading digital copies of recordings they had already purchased in other formats, such as LP and cassette, before CD emerged as the dominant music distribution format.

Beyond these justifications, other users simply enjoyed sharing and downloading music for free. With files obtained through Napster, people often made their own compilation albums on recordable CDs, without paying the record label and/or distributor at all. High-speed networks in college dormitories became overwhelmed, generating around 80% of external traffic as a result of MP3 file transfers. Some universities blocked its use on campus for this reason, even before getting in trouble for facilitating copyright infringement.

The service and program were initially Windows-only, but in 2000 Black Hole Media released a client called Macster. Macster was later purchased by Napster and designated the official client on the Mac; at that point the name "Macster" it was shelved. Even after the Macster acquisition, the Macintosh community had a variety of independently developed Napster clients. Most notable were the open source client called MacStar, created by Squirrel Software in the early 2000s, and Rapster, created by the Overcaster Family in Brazil. The release of the MacStar source code paved the way for third-party Napster clients across all platforms, which gave users ad-free music distribution options.

Hybrid P2P system

To talk about the Napster model, we have to talk about what the centralized directory model is. This is a hybrid P2P system, which means that the indexing service is provided centrally by a coordinating entity. A search request is met by the coordinator-entity that presents a list of peers that have the required files. Then the peer gets the respective files directly from the other peers that offer them.

Napster was the first of the massively popular P2P distributed file systems. This used a central server to maintain lists of connected users and files shared by each of them. This server was in charge of implementing a powerful search engine so that users could locate files on dynamically maintained catalogs, with information on the name and location of the file, IP address and port. File transfers, however, were carried out between users without intermediaries, using TCP (Transport Control Protocol).

Napster used a client-server network structure. The central server maintains a database with information on the files served by each peer. Every time a client connects or disconnects from the network, the database is updated. All paging and control messages are sent to the centralized server. The centralized server compares the request of its clients with the content of its database and sends the correspondences to the client in question. Once informed of the matches, the client contacts the peer directly and accesses the requested resource. The contents are never stored on the central server.

Napster Protocol

A Napster node will log into a server, which is responsible for maintaining a list of nodes and a directory of content. The following table summarizes the messages used in the Napster protocol.

Legal challenges

Heavy metal band Metallica discovered that a demo of their song "I Disappear" had been circulating through the Napster network, even before it was distributed. This eventually led to the song reaching various radio stations across America, and brought Metallica to the attention of making their entire catalog of songs available as well. The band responded in 2000 with a lawsuit against the service offered by Napster. A month later, rapper Dr. Dre, who shared Metallica's plight, also made a similar lawsuit after Napster failed to remove his works from its service, even after he sent a written request. Separately, Metallica and Dr. Dre provided thousands of usernames to Napster, which they believed were pirated their songs. A year later, Napster dispelled both, but only after being shut down by the Ninth Circuit court in a separate lawsuit, by several of the major record labels.

Also in 2000, Madonna, who had previously met with Napster executives to discuss a possible partnership, was upset when her single Music had hit the web and Napster before its release. commercial release, causing extensive media coverage. Napster usage had been verified by 26.4 million users worldwide, as of February 2001.

In 2000, A&M Records and several other record companies sued Napster for indirect contribution to copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the United States. The music industry would make the following claims about Napster:

1. Your users were directly violating copyright.
2. Napster was responsible for contributing to copyright infringements.
3. Napster was responsible for indirect violation of copyright.

The court found Napster liable for all three claims.

Napster lost the case in District Court and appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Although Ninth Circuit found Napster to be capable of commercially important non-infringing uses, it affirmed the District Court's decision. Subsequently, the District Court ordered Napster to monitor its network activities, and to prevent access to infringing material when notified of the material's existence. Napster was unable to do this, so it shut down its service in July 2001. Napster finally filed for bankruptcy in 2002 and sold its assets. He had declared himself offline since the previous year due to court rules.

Subsequent companies and projects followed his P2P model of file sharing successfully such as Gnutella, Freenet and many others. Some services, such as Grokster, Madster, and the original EDonkey2000 network, were taken down or changed due to similar circumstances.

Power of promotion

Pico de Napster in February 2001.

The band The Offspring became involved in pro-Napster protests. The year 2000 arrived and the band found itself involved in problems with their label, Columbia Records. The idea of Dexter Holland's band was to launch their new album over the internet, through their official website. In addition, as mentioned above, the band began to lead a series of protests in favor of Napster, even distributing all kinds of merchandising with the company logo and slogans such as "let's save Napster". However, Napster made a statement prohibiting the Californian band from using the company's advertising with its logo because they violated their rights and copyright images. The contradiction incurred by the company infuriated its clients, who considered that Napster had always advocated the free distribution of content on the network and, furthermore, it was wasting an opportunity offered by artists and groups such as Offspring themselves, Smashing Pumpkins, Limp Bizkit or Courtney Love.

Along with the accusations that Napster was hurting the recording industry's sales, there were also those who felt just the opposite, that file sharing actually stimulated, rather than hurt, sales. The proof may have come in July 2000 when tracks from English rock band Radiohead's album Kid A found their way to Napster three months before the CD's release. Unlike Madonna, Dr. Dre or Metallica, Radiohead had never made the top 20 in the United States. Furthermore, Kid A was an experimental album with no singles, and received relatively little airplay. At the time of the album's release, it had been estimated that the album had been downloaded for free by millions of people worldwide, and in October 2000, Kid A reached number one on the Billboard 200 on its chart. debut week. According to Richard Menta of MP3 Newswire, the Napster effect in this instance was isolated from other elements to which the sales could be credited, and the unexpected success of the album was proof that Napster it was a good promotional tool for music.

One of the most successful bands thanks to the success that Napster provided was Dispatch. As an independent band, they didn't have any form of formal promotion or radio airplay, and yet they were able to tour cities they had never played or done gigs in, thanks to the distribution of their work on Napster. In July 2007, the band became the first independent band to headline New York's Madison Square Garden, selling out for three consecutive nights. The band members were known supporters of Napster. Shawn Fanning, the founder of Napster, is a well-known fan of Dispatch.

Since 2000, many other artists, particularly those who did not belong to any record label, or who did not have access to mass media such as television and radio, have said that Napster and other file-sharing networks they have helped to get their music heard, increase public consent and have improved their sales on a large scale. One musician who publicly defended Napster as a promotional tool for independent artists was Dj xealot, who became directly involved in A&M Records' lawsuit against Napster. Chuck D of Public Enemy also came out to publicly support Napster. Although some underground musicians and independent brands have expressed their support for Napster and the P2P they popularized, others have criticized the unregulated and extra-legal nature of these networks, and some seek to implement Internet promotion models in which they can control the distribution of their own music, such as providing free songs for download or link from their own websites, or cooperating with paid services such as Apple's Insound, Rhapsody ITunes Music Store as well as like Apple's recent Apple Music service.

Closing

The ease of transferring copyrighted material made the Recording Industry Association of America or RIAA (in Spanish North American Music Industry Association) take action on the matter, who immediately on December 7, 1999 went to lawsuit against the popular service, which gave Napster enormous publicity. Soon millions of users, mostly university students, would be using it.

After an unsuccessful appeal to the United States Ninth Circuit Court, an injunction was issued on March 5, 2001, ordering Napster to prevent the sharing of copyrighted music on its network. In July 2001, Napster would shut down its network entirely to comply with the demands.

By September 24, 2001, the case had been partially resolved. Napster had agreed to pay music creators and copyright holders in the amount of about $26 million for unauthorized use of the music, plus $10 million in advance against future royalties. In order to pay these sums, Napster converted its free service to a subscription service, which caused traffic to drop. A prototype solution was tested in the spring of 2002: Napster 3.0 Alpha, using the ".nap" which had security implemented by PlayMedia Systems and digital authentication technology by Relatable. Napster 3.0 was, according to several Napster employees, ready for distribution, but it ran into major problems obtaining licenses to distribute music from the major music companies.

On May 17, 2002, Napster announced that its assets would be acquired by German multimedia brand Bertelsmann for $85 million. Based on that agreement, on June 3, Napster filed for Chapter 11 protection under US bankruptcy laws. On September 3, 2002, the sale of Napster was blocked by a judge, forcing Napster to pay off its debts under Chapter 7 of the law.

Current state

Following a $2.43 million bid by Private Media Group, an adult entertainment company, the Napster brand and logos were acquired at auction by Roxio Inc., who used it instead of its pressplay music distribution service.

In September 2008, Napster was purchased by Best Buy for $121 million.

On December 1, 2011, in an arrangement with Best Buy, Napster merged with Rhapsody. Best Buy will receive a minority interest in Rhapsody.

Napster is enabled for other domains and for any device like tablets, iPad and web platform.

On June 15, 2016, the company Rhapsody announced that it would change its name to the company to try to take advantage of Napster's great weight in the history of digital music. more alternative in the market for streaming music services, such as Spotify and Apple Music.

On June 30, 2022, Napster Music Inc announced the publication of its Litepaper V1, outlining its plans to apply Web3 technology to its current business and its millions of users to return to its roots, being a system decentralized platform that will improve the way music creators, rights holders and fans can interact. The Napster Innovation Foundation entity will issue $NAPSTER tokens using the Algorand blockchain protocol to streamline the functionality of its current platform and open up new options to create value around streaming music.

Alliance with Movistar

On October 10, 2013, Napster and Telefónica Digital (Digital Business Unit of the Telefónica Group) signed an exclusive operation and distribution agreement for the music streaming service for Latin America. As part of the agreement, the clients of Sonora, the subscription music service offered by Terra, the subsidiary of Telefónica, were transferred to Napster while Telefónica, which as a result of the agreement, acquired a shareholding in Rhapsody; it will also be able to offer packages of Napster music services to its hundreds of millions of customers around the world. To date, the Napster Service is available in Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Argentina and Brazil in two modalities: Napster Web and Premium, while in Costa Rica the premium service is offered to certain customers. The first option allows users to access content free of charge through the website with the possibility of listening to music for unlimited time. The Premium version offers access with the same user from the PC and up to 3 mobile devices, allowing you to listen to music online and offline. Through a monthly subscription, customers of Telefónica's mobile operators will be able to pay for it with their respective bills.

Napster in popular culture

• In the film remake The Italian JobShawn Fanning is shown stealing a computer expert's program. Later in the Los Angeles traffic controls the phrase "Never close the real Napster" is shown.
• An episode of animated series Futurama, focuses on the illegal distribution of celebrity robotic clones online. The responsible organization was called "Nappster", as reference to Napster. Later it is revealed, however, that the full name was "Kidnappster" (secure), with "Kid" being covered by the logo.
• In an episode of South ParkStan, Kyle and Kenny download music illegally to inspire themselves by composing their own songs from their band 'Moop'. They are caught by the police and are shown — with acid irony — the “horrores” that causes the artists to be “pirate”. After seeing this, they begin a strike and several famous musicians/bandas join them, including Rancid, Master P, Ozzy Osbourne, Meat Loaf, Blink-182, Horny Toad, Metallica, Britney Spears, Missy Elliott, Alanis Morissette and The Lords of the Underworld (without Timmy).
• In the movie Get Him to the Greek (Mission Rockstar in Spanish and Everything about me Aldous Snow, played by Rusell Brand, yells at Lars Ulrich de Metallica "Why don't you go denounce Napster...".
• In an episode of animated series The Proud family from Disney, Penny acquires an addiction to a site called EZ Jackster, a Napster parody that allowed downloading music illegally.
• A tribute song, "Napster and Gnutella" was written to the rhythm of Puff, the Magic Dragon and distributed through the OpenNap servers during the conflict.
• Johnny Crass, musically satirised the Metallica and Napster conflict in his song “Internet Sandman”, a parody of the song “Enter Sandman”. Crass is shown in a strong opposition to Metallica in his parody, showing the band and co-founder Lars Ulrich in particular as vindictive protectors of private property, whose actions on the controversy "altered the fans".
• Tom Smith wrote a song called "I want my music in Napster" (I Want My Music On Napster).
• The singer "Weird Al" Yankovic on his album Straight Outta Lynwood has a theme called Don't download this songwhere in one of the choirs he says Even Lars Ulrich knows it's wrong (Even Lars Ulrich knows it's wrong), making reference to the lawsuit imposed by the drummer to Napster.
• In the movie The social networkJustin Timberlake interprets Sean Parker as Napster's co-creator.
• In the film The Italian Job ("The Master Scam" in Spanish), the character Lyle, played by Seth Green, is a computer genius whose story transcends by a friend who became popular stealing his program; in a scene Lyle says "he said he put him 'napster' because he liked to sleep a lot", remembering with hatred the theft of his partner, which appears earlier on another scene while Lyle is sleeping and the aforementioned companion steals from his. Later, Lyle calls himself the authentic 'napster'.