Another 10 years have come and gone. This time 10 years ago, Napster was well on its way to making history. 10 years later, BitTorrent is the file-sharing mechanism of choice, but it's been a long road since Napster's early days. Looking back at the burgeoning revolution taking place in 1999, can we say there is anything around today with greater or equal aspirations?

First Napster Injunction - July 2000

The worlds separated by the time before and after Napster are polar opposites. If you remember how the Internet was before Napster’s launch in 1999, you’ll remember that finding music wasn’t very convenient. Remember AltaVista’s MP3 search? What about Lycos’ MP3 search? They actually weren’t too bad, but for most people, file-sharing wasn’t in the Internet vernacular just yet.

But there was a storm brewing in IRC, where searchable P2P networking had been thriving well before the arrival of Napster. The problem was, however, there simply weren’t enough people populating IRC to be a convenient avenue for distribution – primary because file-sharing on IRC was too difficult to use for average user.

Shawn Fanning was at the right place at the right time. The critical mass of necessary MP3 files and demand met at a special moment in Internet history, and Napster was an overnight success. Within a year, Napster was an irresistible avenue of MP3 distribution and a household name. During Napster’s rise, several other smaller P2P networks and protocols were quietly lurking in the distance.

In July 2000, the music industry was granted a temporary injunction order against Napster which threatened to shut down the network. That moment was truly one of the most defining events in file-sharing history. Although the order was stayed two day later, immediately following this news people began flooding other networks like Gnutella, OpenNap, Scour and iMesh. It showed that Napster wasn’t the end all and be of file-sharing, and more importantly, that it was impossible to rebottle the desire for digital music.


RIAA Lawsuit campaign begins - June 2003

Oh no it’s the RIAA lawsuits. The problem with shutting down Napster was that it didn’t fulfill its intended purpose: it didn’t return people to buying CDs, and it didn’t kill the P2P community. If anything it made heightened awareness and left people wondering what the next big thing would be.

Date: 2009-12-16 Source: http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1889