users, and their number was multiplying at an unprecedented rate, already sharing millions
of files. New investors joined in and brought additional 2 million dollars of new funds.
The company was growing by leaps and bounds. They hired a CEO, software engineers, installed
hundreds of servers handling the users’ traffic, rented offices in the Silicon Valley.
So when the Recording Industry Association of America, RIAA, the body that represents
the record labels in the United States, when they filed a lawsuit in December of 1999 against
Napster, citing infringement of the music copyright, no one in the company panicked,
or even worried, because of it. It was seen as a negotiation tactic by the labels to eventually
get the best possible deal from Napster when the time for such deal comes. After all, it
was the labels’ product being shared here, and they should be the most interested party
out there, as they stood to gain big when this thing gets monetized somehow. In the
past, Napster tried to get labels’ executive to make some kind of a deal, any deal, but
no one in the labels’ world would touch it. And now this lawsuit. They must be ready
to deal. Not really. It wasn’t an overture to negotiations.
It was an overture to a kill. Labels were not amused or intrigued by what Napster was
doing. They were furious at what was happening at the Napster dot com, all the files of their
music being downloaded for free, and they saw it as a brazen and clear cut case of copyright
infringement; not as any kind of business opportunity or possibility. Now to be fair,
it is not like Napster was oblivious to the fact that copyright issue may be a problem.
But their opinion, from the beginning, was that since there are no copyrighted files
sitting on their servers, and since the files were being downloaded by their users directly
from other users’ hard drives, the company was in the clear. Besides, even if their users
were infringing on the music copyright, they figured there was that “safe harbor” provision
in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that would protect them, as the service provider,
from the action of their users. We talked about that provision, remember? So they were
confident that they were untouchable and kept concentrating on managing the growth and improving
the platform. The Recording Industry Association lawsuit
brought unexpected stardom to Napster and Shawn Fanning. Napster dot com was the talk
of the media. Front pages of New York Times, L.A. Times, features on MTV, cable networks.
The public opinion was divided, of course, which made for even better media piece. It
went something like this: Napster is freeing music, liberating it from the chains of big
bad labels that grew rich on the sweat of their artists. Napster is a folk hero who
finally gave all the music lovers the freedom and the power they deserve. Long live Napster!
How can you say that? What are you a communist? Those songs didn’t just appear by themselves
on some song tree out there. It cost money, and time, and effort to make those things.
Napster is a thief and a criminal. It robs the artists of their income and it steals
bread from their mouth. Off with its head! Good drama, right? Media loved it. So much
fun, and besides, now that everyone had an opinion about it, and so many people would
tune in to see what’s up with the whole Napster thing, and who will win and who will
lose, and so on, they could sell advertising for those shows for a little more money. See,
fun and profitable. What’s not to love? But in the real world, it did create this
almost generational rift. Most of the young people, college students, and so on, loved
Napster, and vehemently sided with it. Even some music artists and bands supported it
and defended it publically. Limp Bizkit, Chuck D, Courtney Love. And of course, some stood
up against it. Eminem, Dr. Dre, and most famously Metallica, whose drummer Lars Urlich went
as far as to personally, and very publically, deliver to the Napster’s offices a dozen
boxes, filled with a print out of the names of over 300,000 Napster users that illegally
shared Metallica’s songs. Overnight, Metallica went from the leader of the rebels, to the
enemy of everything that the rebels stood for. Not the best publicity move to say the
least. But, of course the media loved it. Couldn’t get enough of it.
By the mid 2000, Napster’s user base grew to over 20 million. And tens of millions of