http://www.time.com/time/magazine/articles/0,3266,55730,00.html
> TECHNOLOGY
> OCTOBER 2, 2000 VOL. 156 NO. 14
>
> Meet the Napster
>
> Shawn Fanning was 18 when he wrote the code that changed the
> world. His fate, and ours, is now in the court's hands
> BY KARL TARO GREENFELD/REDWOOD CITY
>
> At dawn, Shawn Fanning lay on the brown carpet in the shadow of a
> converted bar counter, consumed by the idea. He had been awake 60
> straight hours writing code on his notebook computer. In his
> daze, the idea appeared to him as something tangible--a hard,
> shiny piece of black metal--that he had to forge and form so that
> it became usable, so that the hard black metal was transformed
> into a friendly tool, so that the 0s and 1s, the Windows API
> protocols and Unix server commands, were all somehow buffed and
> polished and worked to a fine, wonderful, simple application.
> That was his idea. And it was big and frightening and full of
> implications, and it filled him up, this 18-year-old college
> dropout sprawled on the floor in his uncle's office, in what used
> to be a restaurant, across the street from the breaking waves in
> Hull, Mass.
>
> He didn't need friends, family, financing--he almost went without
> food. He was self-sufficient, gaining sustenance and strength
> from the work, as if by his hands he was creating his own manna.
> And if the idea could nourish him, he reasoned, then how many
> others could feed on it as well?
>
> Fanning only dimly recalls that period in mid-1999, when he wrote
> the source code for the music file-sharing program called
> Napster. He can't remember specific months, weeks or days. He was
> just hunched over his Dell notebook, writing the software and
> crashing on his uncle's sofa or the floor. Then he'd shake off
> fatigue, scarf a bowl of cereal and sit back down. He worked
> feverishly because he was sure someone else had the same idea,
> that any day now some software company or media conglomerate
> would be unveiling a version of the same application, and then
> Fanning's big idea wouldn't be his anymore.
>
> And he believed in it because his idea was so simple: a program
> that would allow computer users to swap music files with one
> another directly, without going through a centralized file server
> or middleman. He'd heard all the complaints about how frustrating
> it was to try to find good music on the Net, how so many of the
> pointers on websites offering current (which is to say
> copyrighted) music seem to lead only to dead ends. But Fanning
> figured out that if he combined a music-search function with a
> file-sharing system and, to facilitate communication, instant
> messaging, he could bypass the rats' nest of legal and technical
> problems that kept great music from busting out all over the
> World Wide Web.
>
> All he had to do was combine the features of existing programs:
> the instant-messaging system of Internet Relay Chat, the
> file-sharing functions of Microsoft Windows and the advanced
> searching and filtering capabilities of various search engines.
> He reasoned that if he could write a program that included all
> those features, he'd have a pretty cool piece of software.
>
> But there was a huge leap of faith involved. Nearly everyone he
> mentioned the idea to believed it wasn't workable. "It's a
> selfish world, and nobody wants to share," snorted his older,
> more experienced buddies from the IRC chat rooms. Fanning, an
> inarticulate teenager at the time, couldn't adequately explain
> himself. He insisted that people would do it, because, like...
> just because.
>
> What he was thinking was that this is the application that
> finally unleashes the potential of the Web, the viral growth
> possibilities of the community, the transgressive power of the
> Internet to leap over barriers and transform our assumptions
> about business, content and culture. He just couldn't spit out
> the words to convince his fellow programmers that his idea could
> change the world.
>
> Love it or hate it, that's what Napster has done: changed the
> world. It has forced record companies to rethink their business
> models and record-company lawyers and recording artists to defend
> their intellectual property. It has forced purveyors of
> "content," like Time Warner, parent company of TIME, to wonder
> what content will even be in the near future. Napster and
> Fanning have come to personify the bloody intersection where
> commerce, culture and the First Amendment are colliding. On
> behalf of five media companies, the Recording Industry
> Association of America (RIAA) has sued Napster, claiming the
> website and Fanning's program are facilitating the theft of
> intellectual property. Most likely the blueprint for the future
> of the entertainment industry will be drawn from this ruling.
>
> Legal issues aside, Fanning's program already ranks among the
> greatest Internet applications ever, up there with e-mail and
> instant messaging. In terms of users, the Napster site is the
> fastest growing in history, recently passing the 25 million mark
> in less than a year of operation. And, as Fanning predicted, his
> program does everything a Web application is supposed to do: it
> builds community, it breaks down barriers, it is viral, it is
> scalable, it disintermediates--and, oh, yeah, it may be illegal.
>
> For its users, Napster has become another appliance, like a
> toaster or washing machine. Call it the music appliance: log on,
> download, play songs. The simplicity of the program is part of
> its genius. Since he took only three months to write the source
> code, Fanning says he didn't have time to make it more
> complicated. He had to learn Windows programming in addition to
> Unix server code, which he had taught himself. It is exceedingly
> rare for one programmer to excel at client and server
> applications, but Fanning had no choice. "I had to focus on
> functionality, to keep it real simple," he says in his gravelly
> monotone. "With a few more months, I might have added a lot of
> stuff that would have screwed it up. But in the end, I just
> wanted to get the thing out."
>
> The pressure he felt came from a pent-up demand for digital music
> in the late '90s that was going largely unfilled. Before Napster,
> downloading music was so cumbersome it was mostly relegated to
> college students with access to fast pipes and techno geeks
> sufficiently driven to search the Net for the latest Phish
> bootlegs. The digital-music standard MP3, short for ISO-MPEG
> Audio Layer-3, was developed by German engineering firm
> Fraunhofer IIS back in 1987 as a way of compressing CD-quality
> sound files. The technology made it possible to take songs from a
> CD and "rip," or convert them into MP3 files, usually in
> violation of copyright. But even in the mid-'90s, when faster
> computers and high-bandwidth connections to the Internet made it
> possible to seek and find MP3 files, ripping CDs was a tedious
> process.
>
> Then, as if everyone had just been waiting for it, Napster--some
> kid's Big Idea--appeared. And suddenly all these pieces of the
> puzzle fit together. We could all become music pirates because it
> was just so damn easy to do--easier even than ordering a CD
> online. And once that happened, would we ever be able to go back
> to getting into our car, driving to the mall and buying a
> shrink-wrapped piece of plastic with a little silver disc inside?
> "I don't know how to stop it," says Atlantic Records Group
> co-chairman Val Azzoli, of the problems created by Napster. "It's
> not just music I'm worried about. It's all intellectual
> properties. If you can take music, you can take everything else
> too."
>
> Fanning never intended to hijack the music industry. The idea for
> Napster just came to him as he was sitting in his dorm room at
> Northeastern University in Boston, hanging out with his bros,
> drinking a brew and listening to his roommate whine about dead
> MP3 links. Fanning, whose high school nickname was the Napster (a
> reference to his perpetually nappy hair), just shrugged. But he
> began thinking there might be a way to access files without going
> through a website. He had taught himself Unix programming between
> his junior and senior years at Harwich High in Cape Cod. And he
> knew enough to think such a program would have to be possible. "I
> had this idea that there was a lot of material out there sitting
> on people's hard drives," he says. "I mean, even if you were at
> [search-engine websites like] Lycos or Scour, you were still
> looking at people's hard drives. So that's the idea, that there's
> all this stuff sitting on people's PCs--and I had to figure out a
> way to go and get it."
>
> The concept had lodged itself in his head, and he couldn't shake
> it. He began taking his notebook computer everywhere--to
> basketball games and the pizzeria--and tapping away on it,
> working out some basic programming kernels and wondering if this
> were even possible.
>
> One January evening, as he rode back to campus with his cousin
> Brian Fanning, he was, as usual, totally absorbed with his idea.
> "I'm like that. Once I begin focusing on something, I'll just
> keep going until it's done. I cut off the outside world." When
> the BMW pulled up to his red-brick dorm, Fanning absentmindedly
> got out of the car and began walking up the path. After two
> steps, he stopped. Brian, who was about to pull away, waited as
> Fanning turned around, strolled back to the car, opened the door
> and climbed back in. "I'm not going back to school," he told his
> cousin. Brian shrugged and drove off. It was Shawn's problem.
>
> His mom and stepdad, of course, gave him hell, delivering the
> usual platitudes about how he'd regret it and wouldn't amount to
> anything without a degree. "When he didn't go back to school, it
> crushed me," recalls Coleen Verrier, Fanning's mom. "But he
> explained he had these things he said were urgent." Fanning was
> unfazed. He felt he had no choice. The idea had become too big.
> It possessed him. He never went back to his dorm room, leaving
> behind his clothes, books and bedding. He took his computer with
> him, of course.
>
> Fellow programmers marvel at what Fanning was able to accomplish
> when he moved into his uncle's office, a computer gaming company
> in seaside Hull, and set to work on Napster. It was the first
> major program Fanning had ever written. "One thing that sets
> Shawn or any really great programmer apart from mediocre ones is
> their focus," says Ali Aydar, a friend from Massachusetts who now
> works as a Unix programmer in Napster's Redwood City, Calif.,
> offices. "Shawn is able to concentrate, and collaborate and
> appropriate if necessary. He's also able to handle criticism.
> Most alpha-geeks can't take criticism. They'll get into
> arguments. Shawn actually listens and takes the best part of what
> you say."
>
> Fanning, to put it another way, is coachable. That's a trait
> picked up from his jock years, when he excelled at basketball and
> baseball, hitting .750 as a shortstop on a state
> championship-winning team. It may be that his success as an
> athlete gave Fanning the confidence to quit school to pursue his
> idea. And it may be through playing team sports--running endless
> baseball fungo drills and basketball layup lines--that he picked
> up the discipline that allows him to focus on whatever is in
> front of him, to complete whatever task is at hand, whether it is
> taking a pitch to the opposite field or writing a computer
> program. You learn, believes Fanning, how to take criticism when
> you're part of a team.
>
> In creating Napster, Fanning not only transformed the music
> business, but he also helped launch a new programming
> movement--and a whole wave of start-ups dedicated to what has
> become known as P2P, or peer-to-peer, client-based Internet
> software. Among Napster's revolutionary qualities is that it
> allows computer users to exchange files directly, avoiding server
> bottlenecks and, Fanning once hoped, legal problems. Only
> Napster's index and directory reside on a central server; the
> files are actually transferred via various Windows protocols
> directly from user to user. That means that no copyrighted
> material is ever in Napster's possession.
>
> There are myriad--and totally legal--possibilities for P2P
> applications, from swapping dense technical files through a
> local-area network (something scientists at the Centers for
> Disease Control are looking into) to replacing corporate servers
> with P2P systems for business applications. "The old days [i.e.,
> the current Internet] were all about centralization and control,
> almost Soviet-style," says Miko Matsumura, CEO and co-founder of
> Kalepa Networks, a six-month-old start-up that plans to link P2P
> networks into a sort of alternative Internet. "In this new
> topology, everyone brings their own resources. The new network
> will be built on top of the old network. Like Rome was built in
> different layers."
>
> The new network, in other words, may not completely supplant the
> old, but it offers a new space for creating ideas and
> transferring them faster, more freely, more widely than ever
> before. Teams of designers, Web developers and business-school
> graduates are working up P2P programs and business plans and
> trotting them over to venture capitalists, who, in the wake of
> all the buzz about Napster, have been funding P2Ps the way they
> funded their alphabetical brethren B2Bs--business-to-business
> companies--last winter.
>
> Napster, insists Aydar, could not have been written by a team,
> nor could it have been written by anyone 21 or older. "Shawn
> could focus on problem solving--and there was no one to tell him
> he couldn't do these things. There was no one who ever really
> understood what he was doing. He didn't even understand the legal
> issues involved. It was such a cool idea that he never once
> stopped, never really came up for air."
>
> Those issues--what Fanning knew and when he knew it--are now
> integral to the legal proceedings that will determine the future
> of digital music and perhaps the future of all industries that
> trade in intellectual property (see following story). Attorneys
> for the record industry have subpoenaed Fanning's e-mails and
> taken depositions from him, his uncle and other early Napster
> employees. Their contention is that Napster is guilty of
> something called tributary copyright infringement, which means
> Napster is being accused not of violating copyright itself but of
> contributing to and facilitating other people's infringement.
>
> Which really means that if consumers are not guilty of breaking
> the law, then Napster cannot be found guilty. The issue may come
> down to what Napster lead attorney David Boies, who successfully
> prosecuted the Department of Justice's case against Microsoft,
> describes as "the definition of commercial or noncommercial
> uses." It is perfectly legal for consumers to copy music for
> their own enjoyment--i.e., noncommercial use. Congress has even
> declared, in the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, that it is
> legal to make recordings and lend them out to people, provided it
> is not done for commercial purposes. It is unlawful, of course,
> if it's done to make a profit. "The law does not distinguish
> between large-scale and small-scale sharing or lending," insists
> Boies, who puts Napster's chance of winning the suit at
> fifty-fifty.
>
> The record labels certainly disagree, and they have sought an
> injunction to shut down Napster, which U.S. District Judge
> Marilyn Patel granted in July. Although it was immediately stayed
> by federal appeals judges, the same injunction will be ruled on
> by a federal court as early as next week. That ruling is likely
> to determine the future of Napster.
>
> The criterion for an injunction is, among other things, that the
> plaintiff should be able to prove that irreparable harm is going
> to occur between now and the completion of the case. That may not
> be so easy. Although Napster might seem to be taking sales away
> from the record companies, CD sales have actually increased in
> the Napster era--by $500 million this year alone.
>
> If the injunction is upheld, Napster may be forced to fold. By
> the time the case reaches the Supreme Court, as it is likely to
> do, the company may be only a hazy memory in most computer users'
> minds. On the other hand, if Napster staves off the injunction,
> then the likelihood of a settlement with the record industry
> increases considerably. "Remember, as a lawyer I may be
> interested in this case because it raises policy issues," says
> Boies, "But from the client standpoint, what they want to do is
> get on with their business."
>
> One of the great ironies of the Napster affair is that there
> really isn't a business, not yet. And if Fanning loses this case,
> there never will be a business, at least not for this P2P
> company. By the time the case reaches a final verdict, in six
> months or a year, some other hotshot P2P site--Gnutella, perhaps,
> or Freenet--might have become flavor of the month. Napster, for
> all the storm and fury it has engendered, could be remembered as
> a peculiar millennial trend--like those little chrome
> scooters--rather than an epochal event.
>
> As the creator of Napster, Fanning has reached a level of fame
> unprecedented for a 19-year-old who is neither a sports hero nor
> a pop star. He's been on the cover of FORTUNE, BusinessWeek,
> Forbes and the Industry Standard and has been profiled just about
> everywhere else. His name and his face--those piercing blue eyes,
> wide cheeks and stolid expression under the ever present
> University of Michigan baseball cap--have become synonymous with
> the promise of the Internet to empower computer users and the
> possibility that some kiddie-punk programmer will destroy entire
> industries. Strangers pick him out at the mall buying a burrito
> or watching a San Francisco Giants game or just driving around in
> his newly customized Mazda RX-7. He introduced Britney Spears at
> the MTV Video Music Awards. Nike has offered him a shoe deal.
>
> For all that, Fanning has been unable to capitalize fully on his
> fame and notoriety. While he is pulling down a high five-figure
> salary as lead programmer of client applications for Napster and
> owns 9% of the company, so far that 9% has proved essentially
> worthless, since the company is still privately held.
>
> He lives frugally--as do more than a few billionaires in Silicon
> Valley--sharing a two-bedroom San Mateo apartment and a
> 6-ft.-wide-screen Mitsubishi television with co-Napsterite Sean
> Parker. The tables are strewn with old pizza boxes, empty Coke
> cans and, Napster notwithstanding, actual digital discs, both
> video and audio. The furniture is rented, the brown sofa often
> serving as a crash site for Fanning's 13-year-old brother
> Raymond, who is teaching himself to code while he stays with
> Fanning. They have never bothered to get a phone line installed;
> the cell phone works just fine.
>
> There is still the air of the jock about Fanning, an easy-going,
> wide-stepping stride and upper-body muscularity that seem out of
> place on a programmer. He eschews carbohydrates and hits the gym
> most evenings, as if bulking up for his showdown with the record
> industry. And a few afternoons a week he plays basketball in the
> Oracle gymnasium up the road from Napster's Redwood City offices.
> He doesn't like to admit it, but at least one co-worker confirms
> that he is usually the best player on the court.
>
> Shawn Fanning has become surprisingly thoughtful and well
> spoken--perhaps because, being at the center of an epochal
> lawsuit, he has had to. Although his guard is up these days, as
> you talk to him, plucking a Led Zeppelin song on his Les Paul
> guitar, his answers roll out in complete, concise sentences. He
> has a slightly raspy Californian accent--he has already lost
> Massachusetts' stretched a's and long r's--about what it's like
> to be at the center of everyone's attention, and not necessarily
> ever to have wanted to be there.
>
> "I don't think a day goes by when people don't recognize me. I
> mean, it's been good for getting girls. It's a great way to break
> the ice--'Hey, I'm the Napster guy'--but it's hard to move past
> that."
>
> He has a girlfriend now, a fellow 19-year-old who he is sure
> likes him for him and not for Napster. He won't give her name,
> and most of his co-workers don't even know about her. "When I'm
> around her," Fanning says, "I don't have to think about the press
> or about Napster."
>
> Since the lawsuit began, Napster has become enveloped in
> something of a siege mentality, an us-vs.-them attitude toward
> the record labels and the press that has forced Fanning to
> retreat even farther into his shell. He has to monitor carefully
> what he says to whom and even what clothes he wears. "The cdc
> [the Cult of the Dead Cow, a hacker collective] guys sent me a
> shirt, and the lawyers told me I shouldn't wear it," he says.
> "It's just so tightly controlled."
>
> Meanwhile, there is another big idea he is dying to work out,
> another program he has been thinking about and tinkering with
> that, he says, could be bigger than Napster. What he is seeking
> to recapture, he will tell you, are those days back in Hull, when
> it was just Fanning and Napster. When there were no lawsuits and
> no one to answer to and he was left alone to work on this little
> program of his, this idea that he would launch into the world.
>
> Back then, he thought he would just write the application and set
> it free--his name would be embedded deep in the source code and
> known only to the other hackers and programmers who care about
> such things. He misses that simple time, before magazine covers
> and TV interviews and Britney Spears and having to put on a goofy
> black suit and necktie to appear in court.
>
> "I'm going to get back there, to that office, to where I'm just
> alone and able to work something out," Fanning vows. And then he
> picks up his guitar again and starts strumming. He shrugs. He has
> another idea, he keeps saying; he has this idea that he needs to
> work out.
>
>
> -- WITH REPORTING BY CHRIS TAYLOR/SAN FRANCISCO
> AND DAVID E. THIGPEN/CHICAGO
>
> A Peer-to-Peer Primer
> Napster and Gnutella let users swap data from one PC--or
> "peer"--to another, without going through a central server.
> Here's how they work:
>
> Napster
> 1 Napster is downloaded and installed on a personal computer.
>
> 2 The software enables the PC to log on to Napster's server.
> When a search is made, the server checks its database for any
> other Napster users who are online and have that file.
>
> 3 If the server finds a match, Napster puts the computer that has
> the file directly in touch with the computer that wants it, and
> the file is downloaded from one to the other.
>
> Gnutella
> 1 Gnutella is downloaded and installed on a personal computer.
>
> 2 A "hello" message is sent to a computer that's already on the
> network, which forwards it to seven others, letting them know
> that the first computer is onboard. They, in turn, forward it to
> six more, which forward it to five more and so on.
>
> 3 A request for a particular file percolates through the Gnutella
> network. When it reaches a computer that has the file, Gnutella
> connects the two computers directly, and the file is downloaded.
>
> Reported by Lev Grossman
>
> Napster Peers
>
> Pro
> - User friendly, even for relative Luddites
> - Popular, which means more chance you'll find the songs
> you're looking for
> - Napster is run as a business, so customer support matters
>
> Con
> - Its directory is stored on a central server. If the server is
> slow, so is the service
> - It works only for MP3s, not other files
> - Too successful for its own good. Banned at 40% of U.S. colleges
>
> Gnutella Peers
>
> Pro
> - Tough to ban because Gnutella files look like ordinary Web traffic
> - Truly decentralized; Gnutella doesn't rely on any central server
> - Works for all kinds of files; Gnutella isn't restricted to MP3s
>
> Con
> - You need another user to get onto the network
> - It's a grass-roots effort, which means no tech-support hot line
> - Gnutella is a work-in-progress, so there are still bugs in the code
--
Gerald Oskoboiny <
[email protected]>
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/