Digital music, in combination with the internet, has allowed people all across the world to download any song they desire completely free of charge. This is great for consumers, but it is a frightening problem for all involved in the music industry. Illegal downloads have taken the online world by storm. One hundred percent of the music down loaders polled said they have downloaded music illegally. Only 25 percent have downloaded music legally, and only 14 percent of those people have a predominantly legal digital music library. That means only three and a half percent of the music down loaders polled actually have paid for most of their music. It is statistics like that the have the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) scrambling to fix this problem.
             The catalyst of this whole problem is the MP3. MP3 stands for Motion Picture Experts Group, audio layer three and has been around since 1991. It is a music codec that was created by a German research firm for use in the broadcast industry. The format compresses a song to 1/12 its original size by striping away the audio signals not audible to the human ear. The small file size of the MP3 is what allowed Shawn Fanning to write a program that brought the RIAA to its knees.
             Shawn Fanning is a college dropout who brought free music to the masses. He is the creator of the file sharing program Napster. Shawn began attending Northeastern University in the fall of 1998, but soon dropped out so he could focus on the creation of Napster. In May of 1999, Shawn and his uncle John Fanning, with help from private investors, started the company Napster (Man). Practically overnight Napster was a huge success. People began sharing songs by the millions. But soon the RIAA realized the threat of Napster, and on December 7, 1999 the RIAA sued Napster. The lawsuit asked for damages of $100,000 every time a song was copied. In April of 2000, rock group Metallica followed the RIA...