On December 6, 1999, A&M Records sued Napster. Although the trial’s goal was to stop Napster, initially it had the opposite effect, with millions of users signing up for the service while the getting was still good. But given Napster’s business model, it was pretty clear what the effect of the lawsuit ultimately would be. This was the first major case to address the application of copyright laws to peer-to-peer file sharing.
A&M Records was the lead plantiff, along with 17 other record companies, all of which were members of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.
