Napster Versus Metallica

Napster: Launched in 1999, was started by Shawn Fanning as a way to help people find and download music for free in the popular MP3 format.

But was it really all that simple? No, unfortunately it wasn't. The fatal flaw with Napster was it's design. Instead of having a backbone like BitTorrent, Napster had central servers so that when you submitted a request for a song, it would contact the Napster servers, which would then search other people's computers on the Napster network for the song, thus facilitating that song's transfer.

This was fatal for Napster because in early 2000, Metallica filled a lawsuit against Napster for allowing users to distribute their music online without paying royalties.

It's hard to copyright intellectual property which is what Marc over at P2P-Weblog was discussing in his most recent blog. It's relatively easy to copyright something tangible because you can hold it, examine it, take it apart. But who's to say that a song, which expresses certain emotions, feelings, and words, can be copyrighted? How does the creator know that the combination of chords he is using to create a chorus has never been used before?

Napster today is a mere shadow of what it used to be. Today it offers a service just like Apple's iTunes Music Store. You have to pay for every song you want to download. This,unfortunately, was the only legal way for Napster as a company to survive.

Personally, I don't think P2P Networks have anything to worry about. Whenever a corporation or group of lobbyists find some way to shut down a P2P network, like Napster, another one usually pops up to fill the void.