From LQWiki
Napster was a p2p or peer to peer file sharing client. It allowed people to share files with others all over the world. Napster was created in 1999 by a then 18 year old college drop-out, Shawn Fanning. The idea behind the software was to allow people from all over the world to share and download music files for free over the internet. Soon after it was released, Napster spark a global revolution, and the RIAA or Recording Industry Association of America was not happy about it. Later that year, the RIAA sued Napster for copyright infringement. 2 years later, in 2001, a judge ruled that napster could no longer distribute copyrighted materials on its network. Napster then had to block about 250,000 files under over 1.6 million file names. In response to this, the internet community had been building some replacements for Napster, including Gnutella by Nullsoft. Although Nullsoft quickly pulled support for this software, people began dissassembling it and making different programs based on it. Some examples of Gnutella based software included LimeWire for Windows and Linux, and Mutella for Linux. In July 2001 a judge further ruled that Napster had to block all copyright infringing material on its network, which basically shut them down for good. While the RIAA was waging its war against Napster, Metallica and Dr. Drey were waging thier own wars as well. In Febuary 2002 Napster finally went under for good. In 2003 Roxio, the new owners of the Napster name, announed that they would release Napster 2 in 2004. Napster 2 is a legal music downloading program where users must pay $.99 a song for downloads.
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