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Napster Inc. Founded
Napster Inc founded by Shawn Fanning & Sean Parker. The dorm room, file sharing projects becomes popular. -
Napster Inc. Gets Sued
Napster gets sued by the Recording Industry Association of America in San Francisco for copyright infringement. -
Napster Inc. Gets Sued - again.
Metallica - a heavy metal rock band - sues Napster for copyright infringement and racketeering. Rapper, Dr. Dre, also sues them 2 weeks later. -
Incriminating Information
The band's attorney hand delivers more than 300,000 Internet user names of people the band says are illegally sharing their songs using Napster. -
Bad Case
Marilyn Hall Patel - U.S District Judge - rules that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act can't keep them safe. -
Napster Is Dead
Patel grants the Recording Industry Association of America's request for a preliminary injection and orders Napster to shut down. -
Appealed
Appeals court hears spoken arguments in court about the decision Patel made to shut down Napster. -
Win/Win
Napster partners with German media giant - Bertelsmann AG - to develop a membership based distribution system so artist would get paid. Because of this, the lawsuit Bertelsmann had against Napster was dropped and Bertelsmann's music category was available to Napster, while gaining the right to buy a stake in the service. -
Agreement
A federal appeals court ruled that Napster must stop trading in copyrighted material and may be held for "vicarious copyright infringement"
