On April 13, 2000, one of the duels that perhaps redefined the way the Internet works, certainly the way we listen to music, began. The Metallica trial against Napster has begun. Metallica is a heavy metal band that started out in Los Angeles in 1981 and then settled in San Francisco, the heart once of the counterculture and then of Silicon Valley; Napster was a revolution, it was the service everyone had been talking about since it started less than a year ago. It was a way to listen to music for free by exchanging files between users (peer-to-peer).
The anniversary
The world before and after the iPod
by Ernesto Assante
It wasn’t the first, but it was comfortable and easy. And above all, it was illegal. The music industry was furious, that service was screwing up the economic accounts of an entire sector: on vinyl records and CDs they had the words “home taping is killing music” printed but no one seemed to care. Napster had tens of millions of users, happy not to pay. That of Metallica was not the first summons to arrive in court: we had arrived that of the Association of record companies. But it was with Metallica that it got serious. The monthly Wired broke the news with a funeral title. “Metallica Rips Napster”.
The anniversary
So the iPod changed the music industry forever
by Enzo Mazza *
Of all the artists of the time, Metallica were among the least suspected of filing a lawsuit for copyright infringement: in fact, it was a widespread belief that much of their popularity was due to the clandestine diffusion of their music, given that the big radios did not like them. heavy metal. So why them? It went like this: the Metallica manager warned the band that a recording of “I Disappear” – which would later be part of the Mission Impossible 2 soundtrack, released a few months later – had been pirated and was broadcast on about twenty American radio stations. who had downloaded it from Napster. Lars Ulrich, the drummer, said that the four members were furious and decided to take revenge: “They screwed us and we will fuck them” was the sense of the reaction.
And then something happens that Metallica did not foresee even if in hindsight it was obvious: Napster users, some of whom were Metallica fans, were furious against the band. There was no social media yet but what Metallica underwent, Ulrich still calls it “shitstorm”. And they had to defend themselves by explaining that the creative process must be paid, that paying for the music serves to pay the artists and all those who work around each record, that piracy is equivalent to taking something that does not belong to you. A robbery. A few weeks later Dr. Dre also sued Napster and the front began to widen.
At the trial, Metallica were aiming for at least $ 10 million in damages. In the appeal they showed that 335,000 435 Napster users had illegally downloaded their songs. A few months later, the judge agreed with Metallica by ordering Napster to remove all Metallica songs with a copyright. Shortly after, Napster will go bankrupt. And with the launch of Apple’s iPod and iTunes platform, users will be willing to pay for music distributed over the Internet.