New Book: “All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster” - Excerpts

[JackSpratts]

"You know about Napster," Rosen told them, "but you need to understand it. This is going to be big, and the fact that we sued them is going to make it bigger."

Joseph Menn

It was sheer anarchy. That's exactly what transpired in the late 1990s when teenage computer whiz and college dropout Shawn Fanning created Napster--a system that connected computer owners and allowed them to swap music files over the Internet. The $40-billion music industry reeled as a generation of young computer users, completely ignoring the notion of copyright, adopted a disturbing credo: Why pay for music you can get for free? By May 2000, it was estimated by the Internet research firm Webnoize that 73% of U.S. college students were using Napster.

In these excerpts from the book "All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster" (to be published April 15 by Crown Business), Times staff writer Joseph Menn chronicles how a few unworldly kids almost caused the powerful music industry to implode: Artists were caught between trying to maintain their livelihoods while not appearing greedy to their fans, and at one point, the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG antagonized its peers by financing Napster at the same time its own BMG record label was suing to shut down the online service.

In her ruling against Napster, the presiding judge noted that technology had gotten ahead of the law. It also had gotten ahead of reason: If Fanning and his young colleagues didn't understand the full implications of what they had created, the professionals in charge of Napster's business didn't care. The music industry understood, but it had no idea how to stop the juggernaut.

As Napster is stymied (the site is in limbo as its new owners attempt to develop a pay-for-play service), its legacy continues to spiral outward: Pirate successors now combine for a bigger reach than Napster had at its peak; Hollywood and Silicon Valley are jousting on Capitol Hill over whether widespread anti-copying mechanisms will be mandated in future computers; and sales of blank CDs, often used to make custom discs of downloaded music, now top sales of prerecorded CDs.

It all began with a poor Boston-area kid who came west to Silicon Valley and started a revolution.

Full article in L.A. Times -

Nick: peermint
Pass: peermint

http://www.latimes.com/features/prin...s%2Dmagazin e

[Marius]

Very interesting. Thanks for the heads up and the login, JackSpratts.

I wish I could find a P2P with half the rare tracks I used to find on Napster and Audiogalaxy.

Marius