Napster was an American company that created a revolutionary platform that allowed music to be shared online. Originally, it was established as a peer-to-peer file sharing service that emphasized the exchange of soundtracks in MP3 format. Founded in 1999 by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, who bounced back after Napster to become Facebook's first president, it operated between June 1999 and July 2001. It was a revolution because the network allowed music to be "liberated" - at Suddenly, an incredible amount of information was made available on the Internet, a relatively new forum that had not yet experienced huge waves. Napster was that wave: it democratized access to information and allowed the everyday user to listen to millions of songs without having to pay for it. Within a few months of its opening, it had 20 million users – exponential growth that would attract the attention of large media companies, record labels and popular bands like Metallica, ultimately leading to Napster's downfall. The idea taken by the music industry to eliminate the file sharing service meant attacking it from all sides: Napster was hit by numerous lawsuits from different sectors of the music industry. The first to strike was A&M Records. A&M Records was actually not a single record label, but a group of plaintiffs who were all members of the RIAA, the Recording Industry Association of America. Some of these claimants include Sony Music Entertainment, Virgin Records America, Universal Music Group and Warner Bros. Records. When Napster received a preliminary injunction from the District Court, it appealed the decision to the Ninth Circuit. I chose to focus on the District Court case because that was where the arguments were… middle of paper… audiovisuel, 2003. 84-95. Print.3. "Doctrine - AdvoCofer." Doctrine - AdvoCofer. Np, nd Web. 1 April 2014. .4. “Legal Realism in Action: The Continuing Tort of Vicarious Copyright Liability and the De Facto Death of Sony.” UCLA Law Review. UCLA and Web. 2 April 2014. .5. Murray, Andrea. "Copyright in the digital environment". IT law: law and society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 268. Print.6. Rimmer, Matteo. Digital copyright and the consumer revolution give way to my iPod. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2007. Print.7. Thierer, Adam D. and Clyde Wayne Crews. "Napster." Fighting copying: the future of intellectual property in the information age. Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2002. 108-120. Press.