Allowed visitors to search for files on other MP3 users’ hard drive and download to burn their own CDs: control over compilation shifts to consumers
‘freeware’: since Napster’s server did not house or archive the music, the owners thought they were exempt from copyright law and reasoned that prosecution should happen at the individual level: since so dispersed and large ( estimated in the millions a month) it was believed it was not possible to enforce the law
Napster’s early success launched a wave of imitators: Gnutella, I mesh and XXX
