Napster Bad!!
How I discovered a music nirvana only to be booted by the band Metallica
Ultimate Combo
The year was 1999 and there was a huge upgrade I was finally able to make for my apartment: ADSL. I was probably the first one on my block to get ADSL broadband service. As soon as it was available, I had an order placed and scheduled for the install.
“BellSouth.net FastAccess Internet Service is scheduled to be introduced later this year, pending regulatory approvals, and will use Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) technology which provides high speed Internet access for your home or office using your existing copper telephone line - up to 50 times faster than traditional 28.8 modem speeds.”
Then something magical happened... The soon to be very popular and controversial, Napster application was released that summer. Napster was a groundbreaking P2P (peer-to-peer) file-sharing application for digital audio distribution.
As soon as you combined a broadband ADSL internet connection with Napster, it resulted in a state of music nirvana! With this brand new setup, from my apartment, I could do the following:
Search on Napster.
Find a whole album of songs from an artist.
Download the first track on the album (.mp3 file) in less than 2 min.
Play and start listening to that first track.
Then the rest of the album’s tracks would download before I could complete listening to the first track!
So, now you were only limited to what you could imagine to search for. If it was out there being shared, you could get and listen to all of it in minutes.
Metallica Bad!
Then unfortunately, it happened... in early April 2000, something very NOT magical, something very bad happened:
April 13, 2000: Metallica filed a lawsuit against Napster, alleging that the file-sharing company was guilty of copyright infringement and racketeering.
Background: Metallica discovered that a demo of their song “I Disappear”, which was set to be released with the Mission Impossible II soundtrack, was being played on the radio. They traced the leak to a file on Napster’s peer-to-peer file-sharing network, where the band’s entire catalogue was available for free download.
The Lawsuit: Metallica sought a minimum of $10 million in damages, at a rate of $100,000 per illegally downloaded song. They hired NetPD to monitor the Napster service and produce a list of 335,435 Napster users who were allegedly sharing the band’s songs online.
Now since I was already enjoying downloading lots of music via Napster and Metallica was making news headlines by suing Napster... I downloaded a couple of Metallica’s greatest hits like “Orion” and “Master of Puppets” (which I already owned the Master of Puppets album on CD and Cassette Tape).
Well guess what happened next? I return home from a long week of traveling for work and I attempt to start enjoying what will be a very short weekend (before I have to fly out on Sunday again). I go to launch Napster and I am greeted with a very surprising Error message:
This “...banned by Metallica” error was persistent and would not allow me to use Napster on my laptop at all! I tried un-installing Napster and re-installing it. I tried creating a new Napster account and then signing into it with that. No dice, no love! :(
LOL no matter what I tried, “...banned by Metallica“. By Saturday night, I was getting PISSED OFF! Then I had to go online and really research this error and how other people were dealing with it.
Finally, on Sunday of that weekend, someone released a tool that would find and completely delete all of the Registry Keys that Napster injected into my Windows 98 system!
Once that weekend was over, guess what happened? Several people were not cool with the band Metallica anymore and letting the entire internet know about it!
My favorite reaction to all of this came from Camp Chaos (an animation studio similar to JibJab), a popular animation studio on the web at the time. The responses from Camp Chaos to the Metallica Napster debacle was impressive!
ROFL here it is, the original Camp Chaos video completely trolling Metallica:
Napster Bad! (first Napster Bad! video)
Metallica vs Napster 20 Years Later: Who Won? (spin.com article)
Napster Bad! Metallicops (2nd Napster Bad! video)
My Ultimate Response
Ultimately, once I got back on Napster and could once again download music... obviously, I wasn’t going to download Metallica tracks anymore. In fact, I decided right then and there, I am now banning/boycotting Metallica!
Metallica is DEAD TO ME! That April 2000 was the last time I ever listened to a Metallica track! Now, if I want to listen to heavy metal from this era, it’s Megadeth, it’s Pantera it’s NEVER Metallica.
NAPSTER BAD! BEER GOOD!
