Everyone knew that it was only a matter of time before Napster wound up in court, and sure enough, on December 6, 1999, the Recording Industry Association of America filed a lawsuit against Napster in San Francisco’s U.S. District Court. Napster was not even six months old. This is another point that’s widely misunderstood about the Napster story. The lawsuits and the media publicity that came with them helped create the Napster sensation. It was almost a textbook example of the Streisand Effect, the phenomenon (as Wikipedia describes it) whereby an attempt to hide, remove or censor a piece of
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