Napster incorporated in May 1999, and hit its first legal obstacle the following December when the record industry charged it with copyright infringement. The courts recently ordered Napster to block the sharing of copyrighted material. But that's been difficult, in part, because song titles and artists' names are often misspelled in the digitized music files Napster users exchange so the filtering software Napster uses misses many of them. The courts could decide Napster isn't doing enough to block copyrighted material and shut it down. Napster users are still able to swap songs that aren't copyrighted.
Artists have very different views on piracy.
Some see it as promotion. But record labels have not pursued consumers. But again, record labels have not pursued consumers. They're also not as much of a threat to major music labels because they can be hard to use. And you can argue some of these others free sites are not.