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And you talk about

my attraction to it and,

And moving from chicago

to the bay area,

Kind of on a dime

because you know,

Of what i saw in the technology,

I think you could probably,

to a man,

Go through the early people

that were there

And they were drawn to it,

Almost like a tractor being...

because it was

this emotionally true thing.

So distracted, you had to leave.

Right, whatever you

were doing right there,

You just left. I mean a

lot of early employees were,

It's like, you did, undid

what and what and what?

And changed all these things,

in your life and...

we lived together in san mateo

in a small apartment at first.

Like i said, he was bringing

When they first got out there,

they didn't have like

Apartment stuff, so

it was just kind of like

An irish flop house,

you know.

Like a bunch of people

sleeping on, you know,

Blow up mattresses

and things like that

And you know.

Fanning and parker

were both trying

To explain to me

what napster was.

I never used it,

never downloaded.

And at the time,

There were about

30 to 40 thousand

registered users,

So it wasn't that big.

After asking

a million questions,

And, and hearing

from both of them...

music will be ubiquitous

You know, you'll be able

to get it on your cell phone,

You'll be able to get

it on your stereo,

You'll be able to get it on

Whatever the device

of the future is.

And you'll be able to,

I think people are willing

to pay for convenience.

I had the 'aha' moment.

And i knew

at that moment, that...

...it was gonna be.

It was gonna be huge.

There was no doubt in my mind.

And it was a matter of...

could we...

and-And-And then i started

To change the language

i was using.

Could we, keep the servers up?

Could, could we

make this thing scale?

The area where we were

in desperate need of help,

Which was making

the servers scale,

To support all the people

who wanted to use it.

Was his weak spot

as well,

So he and jordan worked

pretty closely together.

What i remember most

about that time

Is sleeping under our desks.

The loud music.

It was all about making small,

incremental wins.

With the code and

with the technology.

It was...

it was a rocky few months.

But every time

we had a little win,

It was a big party.

The night ali and i figured out

Some seriously awesome stuff,

Uh, one of the capacity

limits we had

Was the ability to index

More than a million files

per server.

So four to eight thousand users

Could go on the server,

Uh, before the operating system,

Which was linux, at the time,

Would drop to its knees.

It was an amazing night

because we got it working.

It was probably on the tail end

Of one of our

two to three day stints.

Our, our binges,

and maybe, it was,

It must have been

after midnight.

And ali and i

were just thrilled.

We put on shades,

he put on his hat backwards

And, and i was,

i got up on the table

And i'm like ooh-Ooh-Ooh

and he was like

This is this amazing

celebratory moment.

And there was one picture

in particular,

Where we labeled it

one million files!

Yeah, we had those kinds

of moments all the time.

By, i would say,

by december of '99,

We, we kind of nailed it.

By then there was a bunch of

really technical stuff

That we did, that caused it to

be able to scale.

And it was just a matter

of adding as many machines

As we could at that point.

Just in terms of

the amount of awareness

And exposure that the work

We were associated with um,

gained was meteoric.

So in like a

four or five month span,

It went from

30,000 registered users

To over 20 million.

Total users count now,

I think we just recently

passed 20 million users.

Aol has 23 million.

Even as it really blew up,

i know on the,

On the engineering side

We're watching

these numbers go up,

The simultaneous users

go up and up and up

And then there's more and more

press coverage

But it's still a small company

In a bank building and uh,

i think some people

Had a better

understanding of kind of,

The significance of what

was going on than others,

But day to day it was very hard

to comprehend.

It was one of the first times

in history

Where you had this sort of

pure youth revolution.

Young, inexperienced, relatively

unsophisticated, but smart kids

Could create something

entirely out of nowhere.

And revolutionize

an industry that they frankly,

Knew nothing about.

And had

no relationships in.

And this all happened,

this you know,

I, i think probably

six months passed,

Uh, before we ever

Had a conversation

With anyone

In the, from the music industry.

And it wasn't, it wasn't

because we didn't want

To have a conversation

with anyone

In the music industry,

we just didn't know anyone

In the music industry.

That there are so many wins

with digital distribution

That ultimately, you know,

once we have

The opportunity

to work with artists

And work with the labels

To discuss, you know,

what models are viable

And what are not,

we can come to a conclusion

And find a good model

that works.

There was this,

this moment in time

When you had someone

like shawn fanning

Who had the idea,

um, was smart enough

To build it, but didn't know

enough about the industry

To know that it was

just an impossibility.

Right, just not something

that was ever gonna fly.

Um, but then at a time

when you could get

Tens of millions of dollars

in venture capital,

To back something

which is clearly

Copyright infringement.

Right? That was

the amazing thing

You know, i remember

being in irc with shawn

Once upon a time and

him telling me, you know,

We're raising

70 million dollars.

And my response to him,

I couldn't type it fast enough,

Was don't take the money.

You don't have a business.

You know, this is,

you cannot build a business

On copyright infringement.

Napster was operating

in a legal gray area.

And this very

important law, the dmca,

Which was an amendment

to the copyright act,

Set up a series of safe harbors

For uh, different technology

providers and

Telecommunication providers

To immunize them

against lawsuits

From the content industry.

I believed pretty firmly,

And still believe to this day,

Had it, had, had napster

been fully legislated

At that moment,

that we would have qualified

For i think it was safe harbor,

I want to sway

it was safe harbor d,

Which provided protection

for indexes.

Like yahoo and alta vista.

From the very beginning uh,

Like anyone who

looked at napster,

You were concerned

about the rights issues.

And i knew jeff berg at icm.

Which at the time

was one of the biggest agencies

In hollywood.

[Music]

And i called up and said,

hey jeff,

There's an awesome company

up here,

It's quite disruptive.

Can you go gather up

Some of the music lawyers?

So we went down

and had this meeting.

I remember mo ostin was there,

or mo ostin's lawyer.

And a couple of other people.

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