th no money or food, only his laptop, he began. Working non stop for moths, sometimes days with no sleep at all, he began typing away, knowing that if he did not finish this program soon enough, someone else would think of it and have it done before him. After all his hard work and combing features of programs that already existed like the instant messaging system of Internet Relay Chat, and the file sharing functions of Microsoft Windows, he completed Napster, named after his own nickname in school, the first free music file sharing program on the internet. What has become one of the greatest Internet inventions in history- up there with email and instant messaging. Napster is now used by millions of people everyday and is used just as often as one would use their toaster or watch television, all this from an eighteen year old dropout.
             Napster works as an exchange, or a "Peer-to-Peer" server for users to swap their MP3's- without having any files stored on Napster's central servers. When you logon to the network, you select a folder to "share" with other users, and then the contents of that folder are added to the pool of MP3 files for all users to search in. With all users doing so, this results in a searchable index of approximately 1-2 million files at any given time. Napster only works with MP3 files, not allowing other types of files to be exchanged- although there a programs available which "cloak" files to appear to be MP3s, enabling them to be shared on Napster.
             Finding a file on Napster is a very simple and easy process- one of the factors that have lead to Napster's widespread popularity. To search for a file, users type in the full or partial part of the song title they are looking for, or they can also search by artist. Once the search is submitted, files that matched the searched terms are displayed.
             i.e. If a user was looking for "American Pie" by Don McLean...