Fast forward to 1999. While on the World Wide Web, I come across an MP3 application called Napster. By most accounts, MP3's seem to be the wave of the future, and the concept of buying the new Underworld album online and receiving it instantly over the Internet is extremely cool. Herein lies the rub. There are also applications like Napster, which basically allows you to search for, download and play MP3 files from somebody else's collection.
Problem is, most of the time, it's stealing.
Straight up, no way around it, illegal. If nobody paid for this music, it would be massively difficult to keep producing it. Try to imagine if you were throwing a concert, and 500 people wanted to get in with the same ticket. Well, my friends, quite a bit, and none of it good. One day a security guard saw me trying to purloin a bag of Brach's butterscotch in my jacket.