COPYCENSE

“Shawn Fanning turns 25 on Tuesday, and it’s been a very long seven years since he wrote a little computer program that let him trade electronic music files with his dorm mates at Northeastern University in Boston, where he was a freshman. He called it Napster, after his nickname, and it quickly grew into an Internet phenomenon – not to mention the music industry’s bête noire until it was shut down by the courts four years ago.

“Now the public spotlight is turning back to Mr. Fanning, this time as a symbol of how big business and the disruptive force of the Internet just might find a way to get along. This month, Grokster stopped distributing its software and agreed to pay the record industry $50 million, which it has no prospect of ever raising. By year-end, a new version of Grokster will appear — this one sanctioned by the record industry because it will use technology built by Mr. Fanning.”

Saul Hansell. Putting the Napster Genie Back in the Bottle. The New York Times. Nov. 20, 2005.

(Editor’s Note: The Times allows free access to their stories on the Web for seven days before sending the stories to the paper’s fee-based Archive.)

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.