Law Commons^™

Symposium Introduction: Napster: Innocent Innovation Or Egregious Infringement, Gregory P. Magarian

Scholarship@WashULaw

Napster is gone for now, but the fissures it opened in our understanding of intellectual property will challenge lawyers for a long time. The basic idea behind Napster was a simple outgrowth of the Internet's premise of linking computers to facilitate the wide-spread exchange of information. The Napster Web site, with its peer-to-peer file sharing technology, created a sort of "clearing house" for information, specifically the sound files known as MP3s. Thousands upon thousands of users could sign on to the Napster site at any given time, offer MP3 files for downloading, and in turn download any files that any …