I can vividly remember the sound of a dial-up internet connect paired with the anticipation of hoping to successfully make it onto the world wide web.
My vehicle at the time was a 16 lb., $2,000, Dell BEAST with a pendulum processor. Breakfast of championships.
Originally, I would wait the 6 minutes to connect to go on AIM and chat with the neighborhood pals or play some sort of interactive game, usually a SI for kids game with an occasional addictinggames.com
However, it was after my cousin informed me that music could be downloaded for freeee from a program, at the time, recently introduced. One. Word. Napster.
This new technology of peer-to-peer downloading quickly arose to the top of download.com's most sought after programs list. In December of 2000, 1.5 years after it was probably made in a basement by an MIT graduate student, Napster was downloaded a record 20 million times. Quick math-if each user only had 20 files-there were 400 million available files for online "sharing."
Life was great-Yankees were continuing their reign, and music, all music-from Pearl Jam to Spice Girls to Ice Cube-was absolutely free and only a click away.
Then, unfortunately, came the ego's of Metallica. Accusing the Napster company of copyright infringement, Metallica was willing to "enter sandman" mode if they were not going to see their hard earned royalties.
Napster claimed what they were doing-simply offering a program for users to trade the music-was not illegal. A District Judge ruled the practice of Napster to be illegal, in turn not protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act-the same law that protects the makers of VCRs.
Napster was forced to close their practice in early 2002 in leu of being sued for the "lost" billions of dollars by artists such as Dr.Dre, Limp Bizkit, and Metallica. So that brings us to where we now are-2010-with the most internet users and peer-to-peer software options ever known. Napster has forever changed the way music is viewed, downloaded, and listened to.
Our generation owes great gratitude to the creators of Napster, if not for the free albums of Pharrcyde and Willa Ford, for the notion that as great as music is, we will never pay for it. Shut one operating system down and we will find another.
The best things in life are free, Fuck Metallica!
P. De Galo
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In terms of legal stand point, that is to say the internet is now, to this point, unregulated by government, and being a fellow product of "generation Q" the ruling was and is still a landmark case for us.
ReplyDeleteThe topic of who has the right to interfere with how we choose to use the internet, or rather, what we do on the internet is a topic that will be of particular interest down the road.
Lars Ulrich had a great lawyer and I am not sure of the specifics of the case, but the man with something to lose won and the kid whom had a great idea was nixed.
So multi-million dollar recording artist were bening snubbed out of a buck. What happened to the American Dream....