A Brief History of Filesharing: From Napster to Legal Music Downloads

The Birth and Ascent of the (in)famous Peer-to-peer Revolution

It was that centralization that led to its eventual downfall. Unlike the many subsequent programs which circumvented the need for a main server (and thus made their services essentially anonymous), Napster's cohesive nature made it vulnerable to the legal attacks that began almost immediately upon its inception. Starting in 2000, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) spearheaded a series of lawsuits aimed at shutting down Fanning and Co. Their legal ground seemed unshakeable, their argument unquestionable: facilitating the free trade of "illicit" music files amounted to a violation of copyright law. In fact, at Napster's peak in February 2001, it amounted to over 2.79 billion violations, the approximate number of files traded during that month.

By then the RIAA had whipped itself into a foaming-at-the-mouth frenzy, issuing statements like those by Ron Stone of Gold Mountain Management, who described Napster as "the single most insidious Web site I've ever seen." Their line of reasoning soon diverged into two distinct schools of thought: the polarizing assertion that music filesharing is stealing - and therefore morally wrong - and the more pragmatic allegation that P2P software directly affects CD sales. Six years after Napster's untimely demise...felled by a court injunction in July of 2000, its end was mourned with the equivalent fervor of a royal funeral...peer-to-peer programs have grown steadily, mounting opposition notwithstanding, in their variety and quality. But the charges leveled against them and their users remain essentially the same.

Increasingly, however, critics of the RIAA's war on filesharing are speaking out against these previously undisputed claims. Big-name artists like Metallica and Dr. Dre have been the vanguard of the recording industry's army, raising hell in the name of "copyright protection" and painting the legions of filesharers as common thieves. But in the midst of the firestorm, countless other bands have been quietly benefiting from the increased exposure that P2P programs provided, and despite legal setbacks, filesharing has inevitably fallen into its natural role as the next big publicity tool.