Napster is a name given to two music-focused online services. It was originally founded as a pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing Internet service that emphasized sharing audio files, typically music, encoded in MP3 format. The original company ran into legal difficulties over copyright infringement, ceased operations and was eventually acquired by Roxio. In its second incarnation Napster became an online music store until it merged with Rhapsody on 1 December 2011.

Later companies and projects successfully followed its P2P filesharing example such as Gnutella, Freenet and many others. Some services, like Grokster, Madster and the original eDonkey network, were brought down or changed due to similar circumstances.

Origin[link]

Napster was co-founded by Shawn Fanning, John Fanning, and Sean Parker.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]} Initially, Napster was envisioned as an independent peer-to-peer file sharing service. The service, named after^[which?] Fanning's hairstyle-based nickname, operated between June 1999 and July 2001.^[9] Its technology allowed people to easily share their MP3 files with other participants. Its ease of use led to massive copyright violations of music and film media, as well as other intellectual property.^{[citation needed]} Although the original service was shut down by court order, the Napster brand survived after the company's assets were liquidated and purchased by other companies through bankruptcy proceedings.^[10]

History[link]

Although there were already networks that facilitated the distribution of files across the Internet, such as IRC, Hotline, and USENET, Napster specialized exclusively in music in the form of MP3 files and presented a user-friendly interface. The back-end system was built by Napster's chief architect, Jordan Mendelson.^[11] The result was a robust system whose popularity generated an enormous selection of music to download – at its peak there were 25 million users and 80 million songs, and the system never once crashed.

Napster made it relatively easy for music enthusiasts to download copies of songs that were otherwise difficult to obtain, like older songs, unreleased recordings, and songs from concert bootleg recordings. Some users felt justified in downloading digital copies of recordings they had already purchased in other formats, like LP and cassette tape, before the compact disc emerged as the dominant format for music recordings.

These reasons aside, many other users simply enjoyed trading and downloading music for free. They created a username and password and were able to make their own compilation albums on recordable CDs, without paying any royalties to the artist/composer or the estate of the artist/composer. High-speed networks in college dormitories became overloaded, with as much as 61% of external network traffic consisting of MP3 file transfers.^[12] Many colleges blocked its use for this reason,^[13] even before concerns about liability for facilitating copyright violations on campus.

Macintosh version[link]

The service and software program were initially Windows-only, but in 2000 Black Hole Media wrote a Macintosh client called Macster. Macster was later bought by Napster and designated the official Mac Napster client ("Napster for the Mac"), at which point the Macster name was discontinued.^[14] Even before the acquisition of Macster, the Macintosh community had a variety of independently developed Napster clients. Most notable was the open source client called MacStar, released by Squirrel Software in early 2000 and Rapster, released by Overcaster Family in Brazil.^[15] The release of MacStar's source code paved the way for third-party Napster clients across all computing platforms, which gave users advertisement-free music distribution options.

Legal challenges[link]

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Heavy metal band Metallica discovered that a demo of their song ‘I Disappear’ had been circulating across the network, even before it was released. This eventually led to the song being played on several radio stations across the United States and brought to Metallica’s attention that their entire back catalogue of studio material was also available. The band responded in 2000 by filing a lawsuit against Napster. A month later, rapper and producer Dr. Dre, who shared a litigator and legal firm with Metallica, filed a similar lawsuit after Napster wouldn't remove his works from their service, even after he issued a written request. Separately, both Metallica and Dr. Dre later delivered thousands of usernames to Napster who they believed were pirating their songs. One year later, Napster settled both suits, but this came after being shut down by the Ninth Circuit Court in a separate lawsuit from several major record labels (see below).

Also in 2000, Madonna's single "Music" leaked out on to the web and Napster prior to its commercial release, causing widespread media coverage.^[16] Verified Napster use peaked with 26.4 million users worldwide in February 2001.^[17]

In 2000, A&M Records and several other recording companies, via the RIAA, sued Napster (A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc.) for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).^[18] The music industry made the following claims against Napster:

1. That its users were directly infringing the plaintiffs' copyrights.
2. That Napster was liable for contributory infringement of the plaintiffs' copyrights.
3. That Napster was liable for vicarious infringement of the plaintiffs' copyrights.

Napster lost the case in the District Court and appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Although the Ninth Circuit found that Napster was capable of commercially significant non-infringing uses, it affirmed the District Court's decision. On remand, the District Court ordered Napster to monitor the activities of its network and to block access to infringing material when notified of that material's location. Napster was unable to do this and shut down its service in July 2001. Napster finally declared itself bankrupt in 2002 and sold its assets. It had already been offline since the previous year owing to the effect of the court rulings.^[19]

Promotional power[link]

Napster peaked in February 2001.

Along with the accusations that Napster was hurting the sales of the record industry, there were those who felt just the opposite, that file trading on Napster actually stimulated, rather than hurt, sales. Some evidence 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 hit the top 20 in the US. Furthermore, Kid A was an experimental album without any singles, and received relatively little radio airplay. By the time of the record's release, the album was estimated to have been downloaded for free by millions of people worldwide, and in October 2000 Kid A captured the number one spot on the Billboard 200 sales chart in its debut week. According to Richard Menta of MP3 Newswire,^[20] the effect of Napster in this instance was isolated from other elements that could be credited for driving sales, and the album's unexpected success suggested that Napster was a good promotional tool for music.

One of the most successful bands to owe its success to Napster was Dispatch. Being an independent band, it had no formal promotion or radio play, yet it was able to tour to cities they had never played and sell out concerts, thanks to the spread of their music on Napster. In July 2007, the band became the first independent band to ever headline New York City's Madison Square Garden, selling it out for three consecutive nights. The band members were avid supporters of Napster, promoting it at their shows, playing a Napster show around the time of the Congressional hearings, and attending the hearings themselves. Shawn Fanning, the founder of Napster, is a known Dispatch fan.

Since 2000, many musical artists, particularly those not signed to major labels and without access to traditional mass media outlets such as radio and television, have said that Napster and successive Internet file-sharing networks have helped get their music heard, spread word of mouth, and may have improved their sales in the long term^{[citation needed]}. One such musician to publicly defend Napster as a promotional tool for independent artists was Dj xealot, who became directly involved in the 2000 A&M Records Lawsuit.^[21] Chuck D from Public Enemy also came out and publicly supported Napster.^[22] Although some underground musicians and independent labels have expressed support for Napster and the p2p model it popularized, others have criticized the unregulated and extra-legal nature of these networks, and some seek to implement models of Internet promotion in which they can control the distribution of their own music, such as providing free tracks for download or streaming from their official websites, or co-operating with pay services such as Insound, Rhapsody and Apple's iTunes Store.

Lawsuit[link]

Napster's facilitation of transfer of copyrighted material raised the ire of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which almost immediately—on December 7, 1999—filed a lawsuit against the popular service.^[23][24] The service would only get bigger as the trial, meant to shut down Napster, also gave it a great deal of publicity. Soon millions of users, many of them college students, flocked to it. After a failed appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court, an injunction was issued on March 5, 2001 ordering Napster to prevent the trading of copyrighted music on its network.^[25]

Lessig^[26] claimed, however, that this decision made little sense from the perspective of copyright protection: "When Napster told the district court that it had developed a technology to block the transfer of 99.4 percent of identified infringing material, the district court told council for Napster 99.4 percent was not good enough. Napster had to push the infringements 'down to zero.' If 99.4 percent is not good enough", Lessig concluded, "then this is a war on file-sharing technologies, not a war on copyright infringement."

Shutdown[link]

In July 2001, Napster shut down its entire network in order to comply with the injunction. On September 24, 2001, the case was partially settled. Napster agreed to pay music creators and copyright owners a $26 million settlement for past, unauthorized uses of music, as well as an advance against future licensing royalties of $10 million. In order to pay those fees, Napster attempted to convert their free service to a subscription system. Thus traffic to Napster was reduced. A prototype solution was tested in the spring of 2002: the Napster 3.0 Alpha, using the ".nap" secure file format from PlayMedia Systems^[27] and audio fingerprinting technology licensed from Relatable. Napster 3.0 was, according to many former Napster employees, ready to deploy, but it had significant trouble obtaining licenses to distribute major-label music.

On May 17, 2002, Napster announced that its assets would be acquired by German media firm Bertelsmann for $85 million. Pursuant to terms of that agreement, on June 3 Napster filed for Chapter 11 protection under United States bankruptcy laws. On September 3, 2002, an American bankruptcy judge blocked the sale to Bertelsmann and forced Napster to liquidate its assets according to Chapter 7 of the U.S. bankruptcy laws.^[28]

Current status[link]

After a US$2.43 million takeover offer by the Private Media Group, an adult entertainment company,^[29] Napster's brand and logos were acquired at bankruptcy auction by Roxio, Inc. which used them to rebrand the Pressplay music service as Napster 2.0.

In September 2008, Napster was purchased by US electronics retailer Best Buy for US $121 million.^[30]

On December 1, 2011, pursuant to a deal with Best Buy, Napster merged with Rhapsody. Best Buy will receive a minority stake in Rhapsody.^[31]

Media about Napster[link]

There have been several books that document the experiences of people working at Napster, including Joseph Menn's Napster biography, All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster,^[11] John Alderman's "Sonic Boom: Napster, MP3, and the New Pioneers of Music,"^[32] and Steve Knopper's "Appetite for Self Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age."^[33]

The 2010 film The Social Network features Napster co-founder Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake) in the rise of the popular website Facebook.^[34]

See also[link]

• OpenNap
• Snocap
• TekNap
• imeem
• Kazaa

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Carlsson, Bengt; Gustavsson, Rune (2001). "The Rise and Fall of Napster – An Evolutionary Approach". Proceedings of the 6th International Computer Science Conference on Active Media Technology 
• Giesler, Markus; Pohlmann, Mali (2003). "The Social Form of Napster: Cultivating the Paradox of Consumer Emancipation". Advances in Consumer Research 
• Giesler, Markus; Pohlmann, Mali (2003). "The Anthropology of File Sharing: Consuming Napster as a Gift". Advances in Consumer Research 
• Green, Matthew (2002). "Napster Opens Pandora’s Box: Examining How File-Sharing Services Threaten the Enforcement of Copyright on the Internet". Ohio State Law Journal 63: 799 
• InsightExpress. 2000. Napster and its Users Not violating Copyright Infringement Laws, According to a Survey of the Online Community.
• Ku, Raymond Shih Ray (2001). "The Creative Destruction of Copyright: Napster and the New Economics of Digital Technology". University of Chicago Law Review. DOI:10.2139/ssrn.266964. SSRN 266964 
• McCourt, Tom; Burkart, Patrick (2003). "When Creators, Corporations and Consumers Collide: Napster and the Development of On-line Music Distribution". Media, Culture, & Society 25 (3): 333–350. DOI:10.1177/0163443703025003003 
• Orbach, Barak (2008). "Indirect Free Riding on the Wheels of Commerce: Dual-Use Technologies and Copyright Liability". Emory Law Journal 57: 409–461. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=965720 
• Abramson, Bruce (2005). Digital Phoenix; Why the Information Economy Collapsed and How it Will Rise Again. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-51196-4. 
• Judge criticises both parties in Napster case
• "The File Sharing Movement" in Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, Who Controls the Internet: Illusions of a Borderless World Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 105–125. ISBN 978-0-19-515266-1

External links[link]

• Official website

Sean Parker
Born	1979 (age 32–33)
Education	Oakton High School, Chantilly High School
Occupation	Board of Directors at Spotify Board of Directors at Yammer[1] Managing Partner at The Founders Fund Co-founder of Plaxo, Napster, Airtime, and Causes Founding President of Facebook
Net worth	US$2.1 billion (2012)[2]

Sean Parker (born 1979) is an American entrepreneur who was a co-founder of the file-sharing computer service Napster and the first president of the social networking Web site Facebook. He also co-founded Plaxo, Causes, and Airtime.^[3][4][5][6] As of March 2012, Parker's net worth was estimated to be $2.1 billion.^[2]

Early life[link]

Parker was born in Herndon, Virginia to Diane Parker, a TV advertising broker, and Bruce Parker, a U.S. government oceanographer.^[7][4][8][3] When Parker was 7, his father taught him how to program on an Atari 800.^[3] Parker’s father, who put his family over his entrepreneurial dreams, told Parker "if you are going to take risks, take them early before you have a family."^[9]

As a teenager, Parker’s hobbies were hacking and programming.^[4] One night, while hacking into the network of a Fortune 500 company, Parker was unable to logout after his father unplugged his computer keyboard.^[4] Because his IP address was exposed, F.B.I. agents tracked down the 16-year-old.^[4] Since Parker was a minor, he was sentenced to community service.^[4]

Education[link]

Parker attended Oakton High School in Fairfax County, Virginia for two years before transferring to Chantilly High School in 1996 for his junior and senior years.^[10] While there, Parker wrote a letter to the school administration and persuaded them to count the time he spent coding in the computer lab as a foreign language class.^[10] As a result, towards the end of Parker’s senior year at Chantilly, he was mostly writing code and starting companies.^[10] He graduated in 1998. While still in high school, he interned for Mark Pincus (the current CEO of Zynga) at Pincus's Washington D.C. startup FreeLoader.^[11] He won the Virginia state computer science fair for developing a Web crawler, and was recruited by the C.I.A..^[3] By his senior year of high school, Parker was earning more than $80,000 a year through various projects, enough to convince his parents to allow him to skip college and pursue a career as an entrepreneur.^[3]

As a child, Parker was an avid reader, which was the beginning of his lifelong autodidacticism.^[4][12] Despite his lack of formal education, Parker is sometimes referred to as a "genius."^{[13][14][15][16][17]} He considers his time at Napster to be his college education, calling it "Napster University," since he became well-versed in ­intellectual property law, corporate ­finance, and entrepreneurship.^[18]

Ventures[link]

Napster[link]

When Parker was 15, he met 14 year-old Shawn Fanning over the internet, where the two bonded over topics like theoretical physics and hacking.^[4][19] A few years later, Fanning and Parker co-founded Napster, a free file-sharing service for music.^{[20][21][22][23][24][25][26]} Parker raised the initial $50,000, and they launched Napster in June 1999.^[27] Within a year, the service had tens of millions of users.^[4] Napster was opposed by recording labels, the Recording Industry Association of America, and the heavy metal band Metallica,^[28] among others. Lawsuits by various industry associations eventually shut down the service.^[29][30][26] Napster has been called the fastest growing business of all time, is credited with revolutionizing the music industry and served as a precursor to iTunes.^{[31][32][33][34][35]}

Plaxo[link]

In November 2002, Parker subsequently launched Plaxo, an online address book and social networking service that integrated with Microsoft Outlook.^[36] Plaxo was one of the first products to build virality into its launch, and that earned it 20 million users.^[37][38] Plaxo was an early social networking tool, which would later influence the growth of companies like LinkedIn, Zynga and Facebook.^[39] Two years after founding Plaxo, Parker was ousted by the company’s financiers, Sequoia Capital and Ram Shriram, in an acrimonious exit that reportedly involved the investors hiring private investigators to follow him.^[40][41]

Facebook[link]

In 2004, Parker saw a site called "Thefacebook" on the computer of his roommate’s girlfriend, who was a student at Stanford.^[4] Parker had experience in the social networking space as an early advisor to Friendster and its founder Jonathan Abrams, for which he was given a small amount of stock in 2003.^[3][42] Parker met with Mark Zuckerberg and a few months later joined the five month old company as its founding president.^[4][42] According to Peter Thiel, Facebook’s first investor, Sean Parker was the first to see potential in the company to be "really big," and that "if Mark ever had any second thoughts, Sean was the one who cut that off."^[4]

As president, Parker brought on Thiel as Facebook’s first investor.^[4] Within the initial round of funding, he negotiated for Zuckerberg to retain three of Facebook’s five board seats.^[4] This gave Zuckerberg control of the company, allowing Facebook the freedom to remain a private company.^[3] Additionally, Parker is said to have championed Facebook’s clean user interface and developed its photo-sharing function.^[43][44] Zuckerberg notes that "Sean was pivotal in helping Facebook transform from a college project into a real company."^[3]

During a party in 2005, police entered and searched a vacation home Parker was renting and found cocaine.^[4] Parker was arrested on suspicion of possession but not charged.^[4] This event was subsequently used by Facebook investors to pressure Parker into resigning as company president.^[45] Even after stepping down, Parker continued to remain involved with Facebook’s growth and met regularly with Zuckerberg.^[46] The event was later dramatized in The Social Network.^[47]

Spotify[link]

While working at The Founders Fund, Parker had been looking to invest in a company that could progress Napster’s music sharing mission legally.^[4] In 2009, a friend showed him Spotify, a Swedish streaming music service, and Parker sent an email to Daniel Ek, Spotify’s founder.^[48]

The pair traded emails, and in 2010 Parker invested $15 million in Spotify.^[49][50] Parker, who currently serves on Spotify’s board, negotiated with Warner and Universal, and in July 2011, Spotify announced its U.S. launch.^[25] At Facebook’s f8 conference, Parker announced a partnership between Facebook and Spotify, which allowed users to share their Spotify playlists on their Facebook profiles.^[25][51]

Votizen[link]

In 2010, Parker and The Founders Fund were a part of Votizen's $1.5 million funding round.^[52] Parker now serves on the board of directors for Votizen and he believes "Politics for me is the most obvious area [to be disrupted by the Web]". ^[53]

Airtime[link]

In 2011, Parker reunited with Napster co-founder Shawn Fanning to found Airtime.com. Some of the investors are Ron Conway, Michael Arrington, and Ashton Kutcher.^[54][55] Parker will serve as executive chairman and Fanning as CEO.^[56]

The Founders Fund[link]

In 2006, Parker became managing partner at the Founders Fund, a San Francisco based venture capital fund founded by Peter Thiel.^[57] Founders Fund is focused on investing in early-stage companies, has $500 million in aggregate capital, and has invested in Quantcast, Path, and Knewton.^[58] Parker has carte blanche from Thiel when finding investments.^[59] Parker also hosts The TechFellow Awards, a partnership between TechCrunch and The Founders Fund that annually gives 20 entrepreneurs $100,000 each to invest in startups.^[60][61]

Philanthropy[link]

Parker is an active philanthropist, and has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for cancer research, anti-malaria groups, charity: water, and marijuana legalization.^[62][63][64] He has spoken out in favor of higher taxes, particularly for the "wealthy and super wealthy," and in favor of higher capital gains taxes.^[64]

Parker is the founder of Causes, a philanthropic service that uses social media to connect charities with their supporters and potential donors and then communicates that connection to the user's network of friends.^[65][66] By 2010, 90 million people had joined Causes, donating a total of $27 million.^[67][68] Originally one of the earliest Facebook applications, Causes now lives at Causes.com and raises more than $20,000 a day for various charitable causes.^[67]

In popular culture[link]

Parker was portrayed by Justin Timberlake in the 2010 film, The Social Network.^[4] The movie is a fictionalized account of Facebook's founding and early days.^[69][70][71] Timberlake was lauded for his performance, which portrayed Parker as a cruel, cocky opportunist.^[3][47]

Although Parker praised David Fincher as a director, many have remarked on the differences between Parker and his portrayal by Timberlake.^{[4][3][72][73]} Former Facebook growth chief Chamath Palihapitiya noted that Parker is "really the exact opposite of his portrayal in the film".^[3] Parker took issue with the movie version of Eduardo Saverin's exit from Facebook (with whom Parker reportedly remains friends), as it ironically paralleled his own exit from Plaxo.^[3] Parker called the character a "morally reprehensible human being," although he noted that "it's hard to complain about being played by a sex symbol."^[12][74]

In 2011, Parker was a guest on Jimmy Fallon, featured on the cover of the Forbes 400 issue, and was profiled in Vanity Fair.^[4][75][76]

Personal life[link]

Parker is primarily based in New York City although he frequently travels to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Stockholm, and London for Spotify, Airtime, and the Founders Fund.^[3] His $20 million townhouse in Manhattan includes an indoor pool, 30-foot bamboo plants, and an entrance hall adorned with actual subway cars.^[77][9][78] He is engaged to Alexandra Lenas, a singer-songwriter.^[7][79]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sean Parker

• Sean Parker on Twitter
• Spotify
• Votizen
• Sean Parker on FoundersFund.com
• Sean Parker at CrunchBase