The original software that changed the music industry was started by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker because they were disgusted with the difficulty of finding music files on the Internet. The program they wrote, Napster, allowed people to log on and search for music files on other user’s computer, and then download them to their own computers. The program quickly gained popularity, after its June 1999 launch, with other college students, who had access to high speed internet connections and excesses of free time. By the end of March 2000 many universities had banned its students from using Napster because they were overwhelming the campus servers.

During the Spring and Summer of 2000 a legal war was being waged against Napster, led by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and artist including Metallica and Dr. Dre. On June 26, 2000 Napster was first ordered to shut down and by March of the next year Napster was filtering all copyrighted material.

It soon became apparent that the culture surrounding Napster was not going to be stopped by any court as a plethora of other peer-to-peer file sharing sprang up around the trunk of Napster.

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