Napster

Napster was originally a music file-sharing service intended to trade music files created by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker while they were still at Boston University. The original service operated between June 1999 and July 2001.

In 1999, Recording Industry Association of America sues Napster in federal court in San Francisco alleging copyright infringement such as the Heavy Metal Rock group Metallica and the rapper Dr. Dre .
The next year, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich and the band's attorney produce a list of more than 335,000 Internet user names of people the band says are illegally sharing their songs using Napster.

On February 2001, The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rules that the online music service must stop trading in copyrighted material.
On March 2001, Judge Patel issues an order, effective immediately, requiring Napster to remove copyrighted material from its service within three business days after it receives notice of infringement from the music industry.
On June 2001, A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds its February decision that Napster contributes to copyright infringement and must remove protected works from its song-swapping service.

On June 5th,2001, Napster announces that it is becoming an affiliate of MusicNet - an online song subscription service. The same year, to settle a lawsuit, Napster strikes a deal with the National Music Publishers' Association to pay $26 million for past unauthorized use of music and $10 million down payment on future royalties. The deal also sets up terms under which songwriters and music publishers can license music to Napster's upcoming fee-based service.

The lawsuits and court decisions constrained Napster to pay amazing money to compensate the producers, labels and authors.

For me, all this relentlessness with Napster is justified because it is such file-sharing websites that threaten music artists’ jobs. If everyboby begun to download musics without paying, singers and producers would not have any income.

Today, you can listen musics on the Napster's web site, but you are just allowed to listen to 30 second of the song if you are not in the US.