On July 26, 2000, U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ordered Napster to stop the downloading of songs owned by the record companies filing the suit. On appeal, the Patel decision was blocked, and Napster was able to keep running, gaining more and more notoriety and users [6].
This was not to last.
On February 12, 2001, the Court of Appeals finally ruled that Napster did indeed infringe on copyright laws. After a few more legal dealings, the record companies were asked to provide a list of the songs that were involved in the copyright suit. They did so, and Napster placed filters on their program to prevent the downloading of the named songs. While users managed to dance around the filters, fewer and fewer were using the program because of the limits [6]. And turning to the new kids on the block, Gnutella and KaZaA.
Finally, on July 21, 2001, the "free" Napster shut down [6].
As a side note: A new pay-for-service Napster is now running. Click on the Napster icon at the top and it will take you there...
On January 21, 2000, the Recording Industry Association of
America
(RIAA) brought suit against Napster for mass copyright violations. In
addition to this, universities were actively discouraging students from using
the service because it was clogging up bandwidth. While this didn't stop
people from using Napster (indeed, it even caused more to hear about it and thus
use it), it did bring more negative attention to the company from the powers
that be [6].
In the spring of 2000, two more lawsuits were brought against Napster, this time from artists themselves: Metallica and Dr. Dre [6].