Napster: A musical revolution online

Napster, the website, was built as a central host for users wishing to swap MP3 music files. It has sparked an almighty legal battle over its legitamacy and has changed the way people obtain music.

The system trades MP3 files, an audio compression technology that enables consumers to record music at CD quality levels using their PC, and reduce it to about one tenth of the size normally associated with such files. They can then either store the tracks on their machine's hard disk to listen to at a later date, or send them to friends over the internet with no degradation in quality.

But critics have argued that enabling users to record music in this way encourages piracy and is harming not only the music industry, but also the musicians themselves.