One of the first websites to popularize file sharing, Napster was shut down after the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed a lawsuit claiming massive copyright infringement. In the years after that lawsuit, the RIAA sued more than 30,000 individuals over unauthorized music swapping.

The record industry recently said it was ending these lawsuits, instead opting to target persistent offenders through Internet service providers. Executives found the legal campaign against individual file sharers expensive, and in some ways counterproductive. The record business suffered from becoming known as “one that sues its customers and is out of step with current technology,” said a recent report on online music from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

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