The Rise and Fall of Napster - An Evolutionary Approach

The paper addresses dynamics in information ecosystems due to competition between selfish agents to get control of protectable resources. In our case study we investigate the first arms race on Internet triggered by the Napster introduction of an easy to use service for sharing files with music content among users. We set up a model for investigation of possible scenarios emerging from the Napster and Gnutella peer-to-peer tools for information sharing. We also introduce a formal model for analyzing the Napster scenario in the cases of selfish or altruistic users. The prediction provided by our model is in line with what really happened in the Napster case. The model also shows that the outcome was indeed unavoidable if we have selfish users. 1. Introducing Napster and Gnutella. Setting the Scene The file format MP3 introduced the possibility to compress large audio files into more easy to handle files. For music lovers it became possible to store lots of MP3 files on computers or share them with others, using an Internet connection and file transfer protocols. Napster introduced a peer-to-peer (P2P) environment providing easy mechanisms for connecting different users (peers) and their MP3 file resources. Each of the peers (users) could use a lookup service provided by Napster to find out where to retrieve wanted MP3 files, and also provide their own files. That is, Napster provided a centralized register of locations of files but the files themselves remained at the individual users. Napster quickly became a tremendous success with almost a hundred million of users downloading MP3 music for free. Of course Napster simultaneously become a threat against traditional business models supported by the record companies. The fight initiated by Napster and taken up by Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was about ownership of content and enforcement of copyright laws. At the start Napster concentrated its efforts on providing easy MP3 file sharing among users willing to share their files with others. So, in a sense Napster itself did not ‘copy’ any files, it only provided easy means for others to share content between each other. After some heated debate about ‘freedom on the net’ and ‘rights to content’ there were in the beginning of March 2001 a court order forcing Napster to protect copyright, of music from being shared using its centralized lookup service. The mechanism for protection was to introduce filtering of the lookup service. Users, groups of users or others who of different reasons wanted to protect ‘freedom on the Net’ quickly circumvented the first simple filters. In short the first information war on