Starting in 1999, Shawn and John Fanning started developing Napster. A free way to download music to the mp3 drive on your computer. Being that this service required to share your information to others across the world and allow the computer to access your files, nobody thought this service would take off. Not even the developers themselves. At the height of development, Napster reached 80 million users. Why would people want to give up their privacy and information? Free things make people go crazy! If you are going to give someone something like unlimited music for free they are going to ignore all consequences. If it was anything like how Apple is today, they were notified before downloading that their privacy was at risk. Although they were notified, it was long small print information that was several pages. They just clicked accept happy as can be to get free music.
Anyone else listening to this story and thinking, “This can’t be legal”? Me too! Later Napster was shut down for their illegal operations and the lack of control over the transfer of copyrighted material across its network. Most would figure this operation they were running was not going to last. The RIAA was filing a large lawsuit against Napster because of their distribution of copyright material. They eventually had to shut down from losing the lawsuit. How could a company do so well and be shut down just two years after they start and do nothing about it? Napster wasn’t satisfied by crushing their expectations and 80 million users, but who would be? Napster came back years later and were under the name Rhapsody. This company is very large in Europe. Although this was Napster’s comeback, this is a legal operation.
Although it would be nice to be able to get all music for free, people have to have restrictions on the things they give out for free. Music is a great example. Though it would be nice to get it for free, it’s not right for artists or companies such as Apple, with Apple Music. They pay money to produce the music as well as the companies such as Apple, have to pay the rights to play this music. Most people would understand this but there is always people looking for handouts.
Mass Media and American Life 
I enjoyed reading your blog tonight, I agree when you said “If you are going to give someone something like unlimited music for free they are going to ignore all consequences”. This is true because if apple music now a days was free people would go crazy and wouldn’t have to spend money each month to listen to the music that they want. I do not feel that Napster did anything wrong, they were just testing things out not educated on anything and it happened to go viral and people loved it. In our society now i definitely would not share my personal information for free music, back then maybe yes but now no.
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I do think Napster had good intentions in their attempt to make their music share website but they did end up doing something wrong in the end. They did cost the music industry a lot of money and thats definitely a big problem. I would not give up any privacy to share music do to all the internet hackers in todays world.
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I think the problem is when new technology comes out and their aren’t laws around how they run it can be easy for them to take the easy way out because they can. Is it right no but it happened and it will probably happen again with another form of technology. I’m a private person and would like my information to be protected but there also has to be responsibly on the user to do their research on the product they are using.
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