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The original Napster was first released in the fall of 1999 by college-dropout Shawn Fanning, who wanted an easier method of finding music than by searching IRC or Lycos. John Fanning, Shawn's uncle, helped him incorporate the company. The final documents gave Shawn 30% control of the company, with the rest going to his uncle. It was the first of the massively popular peer-to-peer file sharing systems, although it was not perfectly peer-to-peer since it used central servers to maintain the lists of connected systems and the files they provided, while actual transactions were conducted directly between machines. This is in fact very similar to how instant messaging systems work. Although there were already relatively popular media which facilitated the sharing of files across the internet, such as IRC, Hotline , and USENET, Napster was the first to specialize exclusively in MP3s. The result was a system which featured a large selection of music to download. This made it easy for the general public to obtain the music they wanted without going to a record store to buy an album of songs with only one or two hits and the rest "throwaway tunes". In other instances, people could obtain almost immediately songs they remembered hearing on AM radio but haven't heard in years, perhaps decades. They could also obtain unreleased recordings from bootleg albums, especially those from The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Who, and even unreleased film soundtrack music from John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith.

With the files obtained through Napster, consumers could make their own compilation CD-Rs/albums for free--without paying any royalties to the artist/composer or the estate of the artist/composer.

This raised the ire of several major recording companiesA record label is a brand created by companies that specialize in manufacturing, distributing and promoting audio and video recordings, on various formats including compact discs, LPs, DVD-Audio, SACDs, and cassettes. The name derives from the paper label, who almost immediately -- in December 1999For the album by Prince, see 1999 (album 1999 is a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar), and was designated the International Year of Older Persons by the UN. Events Kosovo War Former child star Gary Coleman files for bankruptcy Y2K prep -- filed a class action suit against Napster. This gave Napster a great deal of publicity, and millions of users flocked to the service. In 2000 Madonna got into the mix when one of her singleAlternate meanings: Single (disambiguation In music, a single is a song considered commercially viable enough by the artist and record company to be released separately from an album, usually featuring on an album as well. It is often accompanied by severs leaked out on to the web prior to its commercial release causing widespread media coverage. Napster use peaked with 13.6 million users in February 20012001 : January February March April May June July August September October November December Events February Iraq disarmament crisis: British and U. forces carry out bombing raids attempting to disable Iraq's air defense network. February 5 Tom Cruise and (source: comScore Media Metrix).

Supporters of Napster were puzzled at the time regarding the lawsuit. To them, it seemed that file sharing was a feature of the internet, and not Napster per se, Napster acting as essentially a search engine. Many argued any attempt to shut down Napster would simply lead to people using a different medium to exchange files over the internet (as has arguably happened with peer-to-peer software like Audiogalaxy, Morpheus, Gnutella, KaZaA and BitTorrent). Similarly many supporters of Napster were concerned about the media's constant use of the word "site" to describe the service (when it was a program not a website), a word which seems to imply that Napster was distributing files itself rather then facilitating people sharing them.

In July 2001, a judge issued an injunction ordering Napster's servers shut down to prevent further copyright violations. On September 24, 2001, the case was partially settled. Napster agreed to pay music creators and copyright owners $26 million in settlement of damages 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. A prototype solution was tested in the spring of 2002: the Napster 3.0 Alpha, using 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 AG for $8 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. Most of the Napster staff were laid off, and the website changed to display "Napster was here".

In the time since the original Napster was shut down, several other peer-to-peer file sharing programs such as Morpheus and KaZaA have been released. These programs have overtaken Napster as the primary source for MP3 sharing fans to obtain the music they want. For over a year, it was likely that the death of Napster (in its original form) would only cause a temporary slowdown in the growth of file sharing according to file-sharing optimists.

The central servers used by Napster made it a convenient legal target (although a program known as " Napigator" allowed the Napster software to connect to any unofficial Napster server), as these clearly indicated the presence of illegal activity, thus making Napster guilty of negligence for not attempting to control the illegal activity. Other hybrid systems such as KaZaA and Audiogalaxy have also been hit by the industry, whereas true peer-to-peer systems such as Gnutella-based Morpheus and LimeWire have proven much harder for the music industry to shut down.

On June 25, 2003, in a landmark decision that forever changed the face of online music services and music piracy itself, the RIAA turned the tables not on the peer-to-peer services but on the computer users themselves and announced it would file civil lawsuits against them for engaging in illegal file sharing, and they made good on their word beginning in September of the same year.