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I regret it now, yeah.

I would have liked to taken it

I would like to have

had a jury trial.

You know, we never had

a jury trial.

Is the effective shut down

of napster.

And what that's going to

do is give birth

To a thousand of napster spawn.

And these children

Are going to be much

better bred.

So once the record companies

Went after napster, did that end

This kind of illegal

music sharing?

This pirated music sharing

on the internet?

Actually,not at all. There's

a theory out there

That piracy will be eradicated

And no one will ever

share a music file.

But that's really a

pipe dream for

[Stammer] really

getting everything

Getting the internet

under control.

What was seen from piracy,

Is that after napster

People went to other music

sharing software.

Such as limewire, or morpheus,

gnutella or music city.

Things like that.

A bomb went off and nobody knew

What the hell was happening.

The cat wasn't going

back in the bag.

I don't care how many

people we sued.

I don't care how effective or

ineffective the riaa

Were, was with certain

aspects of it.

It wasn't going back.

People are gonna still

download for free.

It's free! It's free.

It's wrong, but it's free.

If there is an under-Net of

piracy, that's something

That our industry has always

had to live with.

The idea is to keep

commercial pirates out

Of the marketplace, so that

legitimate commerce

They were saying was it's just a

matter of copyright is gonna be fixed.

And maintained by, by

some combination of

Enforcement and education.

And i said, well this

sounds a lot like

The war on drugs, guys, i mean,

i don't think

This is gonna work.

That certainly didn't.

File sharing services allow for

the illegal downloading

Of copyrighted works,

which can get you

Into trouble in a hurry.

Many parents may be

surprised to learn

Those consequences can

include lawsuits

With penalties and

legal fees costing

Thousands of dollars.

Downloading or sharing music

without permission

Is not okay.

I don't think people are

stealing music.

I think the record

companies are not

Adjusting

To technology.

But rather than adjust

And figure out how to work

with it and use it,

They fought it.

And they started to sue

their customers.

And everything. And i, i think

that alienated them

From both the public

and the artists.

Can you explain again,

[inaudible] what,

If anything, you're doing

to catch thieves?

Well, we have tried to be, uh,

and i think,

Have succeeded in being

as responsible

In this space toward

individual users

As anyone could hope to expect

From the music industry.

We have historically been um,

very uh, tolerant of

Of downloaders, but

very aggressive

Against the uploaders.

We have tried to be focused on

distribution sites

With significant

amounts of music.

I don't think this is about

punishing individuals.

Well, they did. They sued over

18 thousand regular

Old normal people and uh,

average settlement size

Was about $4000 dollars.

From people who could

hardly afford $4000.

So i don't think that

was a good move.

Particularly from a public

relations perspective.

You don't get your

market to like you

By suing the sh*t out of them.

I mean what they've done is to,

is to turn an entire

Generation of kids into

electronic hezbollah.

Who hate them for

ideological reasons.

I mean i know a lot of

people that, that won't

Buy music, period.

Because they don't want to

enrich those people.

And they didn't have to

have it like that.

[Music]

Good hard working people all of

a sudden got laid off

As major music industries,

entire floors were turning

I remember, you know,

people who'd been

Working so hard, doing

such great work,

There's no longer a need

for them because

The market shrinking

because these people

Kind of caved in on

their own greed.

Their bosses, their ceos, their

rock star a&r people

All of a sudden, realized

they'd been shoveling

A bunch of mediocre crap to

a bunch of people

Who they devalued.

But now the people

have a choice.

They can cherry pick

the records.

They now can not have to take

it from you for $22

They can now spend three bucks

on the three songs

That got made into videos.

And everything came loose.

Well it's the perfect storm,

again.

It's three sides really,

When you really think about it.

Free is a pretty big component.

The corporatization of

america and the world

In creative companies.

Right?

And the downsizing of

the structure

Of the music companies.

The whole crux of the argument,

i guess, is

That there's great things

About modern technology, music

and there's things that's sh*t.

And there's great things

about the past,

Some of the past stories

Had to go because the

people demanded it.

Therein lies the problem.

I think uh, we dropped

the ball you know,

But i-I-I don't see why

We can't read you know,

recapture it to some degree.

But uh, it'll it'll never be like it

was, when we controlled everything.

Napster ended up,

unfortunately in the strip

They [inaudible] process and

when uh, people like steve jobs,

They were so smart and business

smart, that they said

Where is talent okay, we hire

the napster people.

Itunes in the us has an

84% market share

Last month for all legally

downloaded music.

I don't think you can point to

any digital music

Service that exists now that

doesn't uh, tip its hat

In some way to napster.

And i, i can tell you

that you know

With the first version of itunes

that was released,

Had shocking similarity to the

ui that napster was using.

And i don't think that

was accidental.

When we finally, we made

money at napster.

So, i mean that we, i was left

with pretty significant

Legal debt. Um, which was you

know, to the extent

That napster was like

napster university.

Was actually not that

different from

The college debt that most kids

would have at that age.

Sort of comparable uh, in scale.

Uh, so, but i had this,

this legal debt

And fanning wasn't that

much better off.

After napster was shut down,

Shawn fanning and i cofounded

A company called snocap.

Which was shawn's

attempt to rectify

The rights issues.

Having been a bit disillusioned

With how the case had gone

And the way that the

conversation

And debate had operated at such

a superficial level

I jumped on this idea of

wanting to create

An independent

copyright database

Where any rights holder,

independent or otherwise

Could register their work.

And the idea was that

Everything that was unclaimed,

Would be freely sharable

Until somebody came in and

said this is mine.

To try to work back

towards a world

Where all this

interesting diverse music

Would be available.

And it was nice and it made

sense in my head,

But the actual act

Of trying to get

everyone to buy into

As an intermediary was an

incredibly challenging

What happened was there was a

lot of excitement

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