Well here's the short answer. As you probably know, Napster has been under fire from the Record Industry ordering them to close there service as it was infringing copyright laws. Napster has been fighting this case for ages now, and finally they had to give in and were forced to compromise with the judge - if they wanted to keep there servers open, they had to start filtering out there servers so no-one could download files which were protected by copyright. If you want to know the longer answer to this question, and find out how this court case has developed, then read on...

The Crackdown on Napster
Of course, the word got out about Napster and its service that allows you to get free music, and the amount of users on its server grew and grew. Napster became one of the world’s most popular websites that people went to, to download the program that everyone wanted.
And, probably due to the increased publicity, the RIAA (The Recording Industry Association of America), representing 17 record labels, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Napster at the end of 1999.

The news of this major legal battle made worldwide news and soon everyone began to hear about Napster. In fact, the lawsuit made the public more aware of the fact that they could obtain music for free on the net, and this made the numbers of people flocking to Napster’s site increase massively.

As the lawsuit went on, Napster kept fighting and fighting to the end to prevent itself from being shut-down. But, on July 26th 2000, Napster was ordered by a Federal Judge to shut-down its servers within 3 days. The public was out-raged. Pirates said that they would create a massive form of retaliation if this went ahead.

Luckily though, on appeal, Napster was aloud to keep its servers open as the case continued.

Where Napster is Today
Napster’s servers today are nothing like what they were before. The court has ruled that, if Napster wanted to keep its servers running for the public to use, it had to start blocking access to 1 million copyrighted files. And because of this, Napster has become near useless. Files available on Napster’s servers are only ones of unsigned bands and the like, which is why people have been looking for an alternative program to Napster - Rish