The building with all the loading bays used to house Napster. When it was shut down in September 2002, the Napster homepage showed only one image...
The Napster Timeline
- 1998
- Fall - Shawn Fanning starts freshman year at Northeastern University. "Napster" is his nickname, his email address, and user name. He intends to major in computer science, and looks for a challenge beyond the entry level classes. He decides to develop a peer-to-peer music sharing system after hearing his roommate complain about the existing systems.
- Winter - Shawn decides to drop out of college and work on the program. Prototypes go to his friends, and their friends, and are met with enthusiasm.
- 1999
- May - Shawn and his uncle incorporate the company.
- Summer - Beta version released and spreads quickly by word of mouth.
- September - Download.com features Napster in its Download Spotlight. Shawn moves to California.
- December - The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sues Napster for $20 billion. Napster volume rises 10-fold as users try to get songs before Napster is shut down.
- 2000
- January - Napster's popularity grinds many academic computer networks to a halt.
- April - Metallica and Dr. Dre sue Napster.
- May - Napster attempts to block passwords for 335,000 of its users who swap Metallica songs.
- June - the RIAA files a motion to have all major-label content removed from Napster.
- July - Federal Judge grants preliminary injunction against Napster. Two days later Napster's legal team succeed in having the injunction stayed. Napster volume rises 10-fold again.
- October - Napster has 30 million users. Shawn Fanning featured on cover of Time magazine.
- 2001
- February - The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rules Napster knew its users were trading illegal music. The Judge orders Napster shut down again. Napster has 60 million users.
- March - Napster begins blocking copyrighted music from their site, but claims it doesn't know what is copyrighted. The RIAA supplies a list of 135,000 copyrighted songs. Napster users begin scrambling the titles and artist names of the files, making filtering difficult.
- April - Napster begins filtering with 'acoustic fingerprinting'.
- July - The Judge orders Napster offline until it can prove it is completely free of illegal music.
- 2002
- May - Napster announces it will be acquired by German media firm Bertlsmann.
- June - Napster files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
- September - Judge blocks the sale of Napster to Bertelsmann. Napster lays off most of the staff. Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation begins.
"Napster may be gone but the legacy that it left behind was millions of users who were exposed to the concept of P-to-P networks," says Michael Gartenberg, research director at Jupiter Research. "The genie is out of the bottle."
"What's more, the RIAA's recent attempts to track down individual, infringing file swappers, have apparently boiled the blood of some tech-savvy swappers, who not only hacked the RIAA's site, but posted free music downloads on it."
"The hacking crowd is not a group of people you want to pick a fight with," Gartenberg says. "If the game here is going to be a technical cat and mouse, the recording industry is doomed to failure."
