The launch of Napster in 1999 forever changed both the expectations of music fans and the music business as a whole. For the first time music fans could search, access and download a virtually unlimited number of songs in MP3 format directly to their PC, without paying for them. Napster was ultimately shut down through a court order after being sued by several major label artists and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for copyright infringement but not before millions of music fans experienced the peer-to-peer (P2P) or file sharing.

The success and ultimate demise of Napster lead to new P2P networks being launched to meet the demand for online music downloads. The growing use of P2P networks sparked a heated debate between artists who believed that file sharing provided a tremendous promotional opportunity, especially for lesser-known artists, and those who viewed file sharing as outright theft. The launch of iTunes in early 2001 finally gave music fans a way to legally purchase songs directly from their PC.

The RIAA continued it’s legal action against P2P networks and their individual users. Ultimately several file sharing networks were closed by court order and some including Kazaa, Limewire , iMesh and Bearshare were converted to legal models and some licensed their content from the appropriate distributors and labels.

Today the RIAA continues to wage an ongoing legal battle with file sharing networks that make music available without paying for it and those individuals who use them.