????1.創意

????首先，讓我們把時鐘撥回到1999年春天。當時還不到20歲的肖恩?范寧，在一個互聯網中繼聊天室(Internet Relay Chat)閑逛。他登上了一個名為w00w00的黑客網絡頻道。他用網名“Napster”——一個源自籃球場的綽號，有個家伙噴出這個臟字取笑他的頭發——告訴這個小組，他正在致力于開發一個可以讓人們更加容易交換音樂文件的軟件。他向20歲的安全程序員喬丹?里特爾求助，后者的網名叫“Nocarrier”。

????喬丹?里特爾（Napster的創始架構師）：Napster的根源其實在計算機安全世界，而且是地下的。我、馬特?科諾菲爾（互聯網中繼聊天室的另一位黑客）和其他幾個朋友一起創建了這個小組。范寧，也就是Napster，也是這些人中的一位。他算是這個小組的外圍人員吧。我此前從來沒有跟他深入交流過。范寧開始就他正在從事的這個項目向小組求助。我記得，它當時叫音樂網(Music Net)。

????作為技術專家和黑客，我們一直共享內容和數據。如果我們想要音樂，我們會去互聯網中繼聊天室的某個頻道，鼓搗出一個機器人程序，用它下載音樂。要得到這種東西，依然需要費一些周折。所以，范寧產生了一個富于青春活力的想法：伙計，這太惡心了，無聊透頂。我想創造一個使這一切更容易的玩意。

????艾達爾?阿里（Napster公司高級技術總監）：我不得不承認，我并沒有立刻意識到Napster 的重要性。我所說的立刻，指的是范寧第一次向我描述它的時候。他大約勸說我了20分鐘，我隨后恍然大悟，突然意識到這是一個多么了不起的創意，所以就產生了幫助他的興趣。（財富中文網）

????譯者：任文科

????

????I. THE IDEA

????So let's step back to spring of 1999. Shawn Fanning is a teenager hanging out on the messaging service Internet Relay Chat. He's on a channel called w00w00, a hacker network. Going by the online handle "Napster," -- a nickname he got from a trash talker making fun of his hair on the basketball court -- he tells the group about a program he's working on that will make it easier for people to swap music files. One person he turns to for help is Jordan Ritter, a 20-year-old security programmer who goes by the name "Nocarrier."

????Jordan Ritter (Napster founding architect): Interesting story there. The roots of Napster are actually in the computer security world. The underground. Myself and Matt Conover [another hacker on IRC] and a few other guys founded this group. And Fanning, er, Napster, was one of those people as well. Kind of a peripheral connection to the group. I'd never actually talked to him much before. Fanning started to solicit the group for help on this project he was working on, which I believe at the time was called Music Net.

????As technologists, as hackers, we were sharing content, sharing data all the time. If we wanted music, we would go into some IRC channel, and hit up a bot there and download music from it. It was still kind of a pain in the ass to get that stuff. So Fanning had a youthful idea: Man, this sucks. I'm bored, and I want to make something that makes this easier.

????Ali Aydar (Napster senior director of technology): I have to admit, I didn't get the gravity of Napster itself immediately. And what I mean by immediately, I mean when [Fanning] first described it to me. He kind of worked on me for 20 minutes, and after that it dawned on me how big this thing could be. And so that got me interested in helping him.