Napster Trivia Questions

A federal court ordered Napster to shut down its servers on July 27, 2001, after A&M Records won a copyright infringement case against the company.

Napster was founded by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker. Steve Jobs had no involvement; he was at Apple and Pixar at the time.

Napster was a peer-to-peer service that only indexed MP3 files on users' computers. The actual music files were shared directly between users, not hosted by Napster.

Earlier file-sharing services existed, such as Hotline and Scour. Napster popularized the concept but was not the first peer-to-peer service.

Napster was shut down by a federal court order after a civil lawsuit from record labels, not by the FBI. The FBI did not have direct involvement.

At its height in early 2001, Napster had approximately 80 million registered users, a figure widely cited in news reports and court documents.

Napster's original logo was a silhouette of a cat wearing headphones. The cat design was chosen to represent the 'cool' vibe of the service.

Shawn Fanning's friends called him 'Napster' because of his nappy (curly) hair. He later used it for the service. This is documented in biographies and interviews.