The Internet was invented in the late 1960's and of course many important events have happened along the Internet timeline. But if you had to choose one, one important date on that timeline which would you be most interested in?
July 2001: A federal judge rules Napster must remain offline until it can prevent copyrighted material from being shared by its users
We have all heard of Napster. Napster was created by Shawn Fanning and his uncle John Fanning in 1999 while Shawn attended Northeastern University. Its was originally set up as a peer- to - peer file sharing service where people could share music.....for free. After running into massive legal battles regarding copyright violations the site was forced to shut down.
The site made it easy to exchange MP3 files which musicians viewed as "stealing". The band Metallica ignited the legal battles when they discovered their song "I Disappear" was being downloaded on the site before it was even released. After being sued by musician such as Metallica, Dr. Dre and organizations as the RIAA the site officially shut down in July of 2001.
In 2002, Roxio acquired the company and in September of 2008 the site was purchased by Best Buy for $121 million who is the current parent company of the site. The site currently exists as an online music store which requires a paid online subscription.
Napster.com
Napster may have run into major difficulties over the past few years, but it opened the doors for music share and music purchase sites.
February 2007: Apple Surpasses one billion iTunes downloads
Today if you want to purchase music online, most people automatically think of the site iTunes. iTunes was established in January of 2001. Of course with this site you pay for the files that you download but without the presence of Napster, do you think 1 billion songs would have been downloaded in 6 years !
One Billion Songs - now that is alot of music.......
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