Napster & Copyright Laws

Napster is an online music service that was originally a file sharing service. Napster made a major impact on the Internet in calendar year 2000 when it reached the height of its popularity. The company has a remarkable history. In early 1999, Shawn Fanning began to develop an idea of sharing music formatted as MP3 files. He thought of the idea of using a search engine dedicated to finding MP3 files combined with the tools needed to trade files called file sharing. The trick was to share files without having to use a centralized server for storage. Once the software was perfected, all that was required to make copies was copy of the Napster software, a shared directory so that remote users could access files, and an Internet connection.

The biggest problem for Napster was the copyright laws of the United States provide copyright protection in sound recordings. Most of the songs traded on Napster were copyrighted. Napster had not licensed the copyrights. However, Napster facilitated trading of copyrighte

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