Alex Rodriguez

. This has also been extended to Friendster, a site which vaguely recalls Napster's community-building features.^{[10] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster#endnote_blogster), [11] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster#endnote_sxsw)}. Had he attended the first class, the Mariners would have been unable by Major League Baseball rules to sign him, and no one would have been able to draft him for 2 more years. The suffix "-ster" has become a popular component of the brand names of many internet products, suggesting a peer-to-peer model, such as Grokster, Aimster (later Madster), Blubster. He had even enrolled in classes, but on his way to the first class he met a scout for the Mariners who offered a large signing bonus and he signed ending his college career before it began. In the 2003 remake of The Italian Job, a flashback depicts Shawn Fanning stealing the program from a computer expert played by Seth Green while the latter is napping, depicting a humorous folk etymology of the name. While in high school, Rodriguez had signed a letter of intent with the University to play baseball. In a very real sense, Shawn Fanning can be called the man who opened a Pandora's Box.

In 2003, Alex Rodriguez gave a $10 million gift to the University of Miami to build a new baseball stadium. An emerging and cryptographically strong third generation of P2P protocols will likely be nearly impossible to interdict. was the previous record holder by reaching 400 home runs at 30 years and 141 days old. The ever-widening availability of broadband has made file sharing even more prevalent, since with increasing download speeds mean the distribution of entire movies and other large files is possible. Ken Griffey, Jr. Grokster, decision currently pending). On June 8th, Rodriguez hit his 400th career home run, becoming the youngest player in Major League history to do so at 29 years and 316 days old. Designed as decentralized networks, these have been much more challenging for copyright owners to pursue in the courts (see MGM vs.

Alex Rodriguez's salary of $25,705,118 is the highest in Major League Baseball in the 2005 season. Unofficial Napster servers proliferated, aided by a program known as "Napigator", and a second generation of P2P protocols (including FastTrack and Gnutella) were quickly developed. But the umpires huddled and ended up calling him out, which made Jeter return to first base. This action by Rodriguez has given him a bad image, especially among Red Sox fans. In the meantime, the peer-to-peer filesharing (or P2P) trend Napster started soon resumed, with new programs and networks picking up the torch. Rodriguez was called safe at first, and Derek Jeter scored from first base. The years between Napster's demise and the emergence of the iTunes Music Store as the first popular pay-service were squandered as the five major labels bickered amongst themselves, launching the user-unfriendly, restrictive, and mutually incompatible subscription services Pressplay and MusicNet.^{[9] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster#endnote_musicnetpressplay)}. During the 2004 American League Championship Series against the Boston Red Sox, Alex Rodriguez caused controversey when he "slapped" the baseball out of pitcher Bronson Arroyo's glove when running to first base. Although the central servers used by Napster made it a convenient legal target, the record industry failed to capitalize on the power vacuum left in its wake.

2 spot in the batting order, directly behind Jeter. As of 2005, this new service has met with moderate success. Near the end of the season, Yankees manager Joe Torre moved Rodriguez to the No. which used them to rebrand the Pressplay music service as Napster 2.0. Rodriguez performed well, though average by his standards, in his first season with the Yankees, hitting .286 with 36 home runs and 106 runs batted in, his seventh consecutive season with at least 100 RBI. After a 2.4 million dollar offer by the Private Media Group, an "adult entertainment company",^{[8] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster#endnote_porn)} Napster's brand and logos were acquired at bankruptcy auction by the company Roxio, Inc. There was some speculation as to what his number would be, but in spring training he showed up with uniform number 13, answering the question. In the absence of any other force that could account for this success Menta declared this was proof that Napster was a promotional power.

He had worn uniform number 3 his entire career, but that number on the Yankees is retired in honor of Babe Ruth. The record beat out the CDs of some of the most heavily marketed artists of the time including Madonna and Eminem. In addition to moving from shortstop to third, Rodriguez had to make another change upon joining the Yankees. Kid A not only broke the top 20, it captured the number one spot on the charts in its debut week. After Rodriguez agreed to switch positions and play third base, the deal between New York and Texas was consummated. The record industry braced for the worst, but then came the big surprise. Since New York already had a star shortstop in team captain Derek Jeter, the trade developed only after New York's third baseman, Aaron Boone, suffered a season-ending knee injury while playing a game of pickup basketball during the off-season. By the time of the record's release Kid A had been downloaded by millions of people worldwide.

In the trade, the Rangers will have to pay $67 million of the $179 million left on Rodriguez's contract. As Richard Menta of MP3 Newswire described,^{[7] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster#endnote_kida)} it was a perfect vehicle to test this theory as the effect of Napster was isolated from other elements that could be credited for driving sales. On February 15, 2004, after a period in which he had been courted by the Boston Red Sox and named as the Rangers' captain, Rodriguez was traded to the New York Yankees for second baseman Alfonso Soriano and a player to be named later. Furthermore, it was an experimental album that received little promotion and almost no radio airplay. He hit .298 with 47 home runs, won his second consecutive Gold Glove Award and was named the league's MVP, despite the Rangers remaining mired in last place. Unlike Madonna, Radiohead never hit the top 20 in the US. Rodriguez 's last season with Texas, 2003, was another productive year for A-Rod. Proof may have come in April 2000 when tracks from Radiohead's album Kid A found their way to Napster three months before the CD's release.

Although Tejada had lesser numbers than Rodriguez, he played for a championship-caliber team. The Mariners didn't miss him; they won 116 games in their first year without him. With all the accusations that Napster was destroying the record industry there were those who felt just the opposite, that file trading on Napster actually stimulated, rather than hurt, sales. Unfortunately, the Rangers made no real improvement in the two years he played there, finishing last both times, and it likely cost him the MVP award in 2002, as he finished second to fellow shortstop Miguel Tejada. bankruptcy laws.^{[6] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster#endnote_blocked)} Most of the Napster staff were laid off, and the website changed to display "Napster was here". Despite the enormous pressure carried by the contract, Rodriguez continued to produce, and has been even better than before. He hit 52 home runs in 2001, and followed that up with a major league best 57 home runs in 2002, the most ever for a shortstop. He put a bookend on that year by winning his first Gold Glove Award. On September 3, 2002, an American bankruptcy judge blocked the sale to Bertelsmann and forced Napster to liquidate its assets according to Chapter 7 of the U.S. A free agent after the season, Rodriguez, who wanted to go to a Series-caliber team, was immediately rumored to be heading to the Mets because of his appearance at Shea, but instead chose to go to the Texas Rangers (last in their division in 2000), signing what is the largest contract in American sports history, a 10-year contract worth an astounding $252 million. Because of the contract, considered outrageous by many fans, Mariners fans that loved him immediately turned on him for taking the money and running instead of staying with a winner; to this day he's regularly booed every time he returns to Seattle. Pursuant to terms of that agreement, on June 3 Napster filed for Chapter 11 protection under United States bankruptcy laws.

He still made an appearance in the Series, sitting in the stands of Shea Stadium watching his friend Derek Jeter play in that year's all-New York World Series between the Yankees and New York Mets. On May 17, 2002, Napster announced that its assets would be acquired by German media firm Bertelsmann AG for $8 million. Winning the AL West in 2000, Rodriguez hit well in the playoffs, but the Mariners lost to the World Series champion New York Yankees in the LCS. Napster 3.0 was, according to many former Napster employees, ready to deploy, but it had significant trouble obtaining licenses to distribute major-label music. Rodriguez continued to put up great numbers as the team's remaining superstar, and hit 41 more HR's in 2000 as he hit .316, doing so playing in the best pitcher's park in the AL. A prototype solution was tested in the spring of 2002: the Napster 3.0 Alpha, using audio fingerprinting technology licensed from Relatable. in the past two seasons. In order to pay those fees, Napster attempted to convert their free service to a subscription system.

The Mariners entered 2000 with A-Rod as the cornerstone of the franchise, having dealt superstars Randy Johnson and Ken Griffey, Jr. Napster agreed to pay music creators and copyright owners a $26 million settlement for past, unauthorized uses of music, as well as an advance against future licensing royalties of $10 million. Despite missing 30+ games with an injury and playing home games at Safeco Field (a considerably less hitter-friendly ballpark than the Kingdome) for the second half of the season, he matched his HR total in 1999. After a failed appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court, an injunction was issued on March 5, 2001 ordering Napster to prevent the trading of copyrighted music on its network.^{[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster#endnote_injunction)} In July 2001, Napster shut down its entire network in order to comply with the injunction. On September 24, 2001, the case was partially settled. He recovered with authority in 1998 by becoming the 3rd member of the 40 homers/40 stolen bases club, racking up 42 HR and 46 SB. Similarly, many supporters of Napster were concerned about the media's constant use of the word "site" to describe the service, a word which seems to imply that Napster was distributing files itself rather than facilitating their exchange. He hit for the cycle with them in 1997, but slumped that year with only 23 home runs and a "mere" .300 average; the Mariners nonetheless won the division but were quickly eliminated from the playoffs. Many argued that any attempt to shut down Napster would simply lead to people using a different medium to exchange files over the Internet.

Rodriguez was a favorite with Mariners fans. These users viewed Napster as a simple search engine. He came close to being the youngest MVP in baseball history, but fell 3 points short to Juan González; possibly denying him this honor were the two Seattle-area sportswriters who voted for the award, as they gave him 8th and 9th place votes. To them, it seemed that file sharing was inevitable on the Internet, and it was not Napster's fault that people used the service to share copyrighted files. He took over as the regular shortstop the following year, and immediately became a superstar, hitting 36 home runs and pacing the American League with a .358 batting average, and leading the league in runs, total bases, and doubles; great numbers even by the standards of the Kingdome, one of the American League's best hitter's parks. At the time, the lawsuit puzzled Napster users and supporters. One of his most important contributions in the playoffs was consoling second baseman Joey Cora, who memorably broke down in tears after the Mariners' loss in the League Championship Series. Later that year, Madonna became irate when one of her singles leaked out on to the web and Napster prior to its commercial release, causing widespread media coverage.^{[3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster#endnote_madonna)} Napster use peaked with 26.4 million users worldwide in February 2001.^{[4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster#endnote_peak)}.

After his major league campaign in 1994 was cut short by the players' strike, he split most of 1995 between Seattle and their AAA club 30 miles away in Tacoma before staying on the major league roster in August, making a pair of postseason appearances on the Mariners' playoff run. The lawsuit was a failure, but 300,000 Napster users were banned from the service for sharing Metallica mp3s. He made a rapid rise through the organization and made his major league debut at just 18 years of age, becoming one of the youngest players to appear in a game at shortstop. The band responded in 2000 by filing a lawsuit against the Napster service. His skills were rewarded when the Seattle Mariners made the 17-year old the #1 pick of the amateur draft in 1993. This eventually led to the song being played on several radio stations across America. Rodríguez was a star player at Miami Westminster Christian High School. Heavy metal band Metallica discovered that a demo of their song "I Disappear" had been circulating across the Napster network.

Rodríguez has said in interviews he can forgive his father for abandoning the family, but that he will never forget. Soon millions of users, many of them college students, flocked to it. There, Alex's father announced he had to go to New York for a short time; he never returned. Napster's facilitation of illegal activity raised the ire of several major recording companies, who almost immediately — in December 1999 — filed a lawsuit against the popular service,^{[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster#endnote_amrecords)} already called a "a huge grassroots effort" by MP3 Newswire.^{[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster#endnote_grassroots)} The service would only get bigger as the trial, meant to shut down Napster, also gave it a great deal of publicity. They moved to Miami, Florida 4 years later. With the files obtained through Napster, people frequently made their own compilation albums on recordable CDs for free, without paying any royalties to the artist/composer or the estate of the artist/composer. Born in New York City, Rodríguez moved back with his parents to their native Dominican Republic when he was 4. Napster also enabled people to obtain older songs, copies of music they had already paid for in another format, unreleased recordings, and songs from concert bootleg recordings.

Less than three weeks later, he was traded to the Yankees, the first reigning MVP to be traded in the history of Major League Baseball. People praised Napster because it enabled them to obtain hit songs without having to buy an entire album (or indeed, pay at all). Then on January 25, 2004, he was named captain of the Rangers. Many people said that albums contained only one or two good songs, along with many low-quality "filler" songs. The Players Association blocked the deal, however, because the Red Sox wanted to cut Rodriguez's salary. At the time Napster was released, there was a general perception that the quality of new albums had decreased. The following month the Rangers tried unsuccessfully to trade Rodriguez and his hefty salary to the Boston Red Sox. The result was a system whose popularity generated a large selection of music to download.

It was the second time in MLB history that a player of a team finishing last in the league was given the award (Andre Dawson also won the award for the last place Chicago Cubs). Although there were already media which facilitated the sharing of files across the Internet, such as IRC, Hotline, and USENET, Napster specialized exclusively in music in the form of MP3 files and presented a friendly user-interface. On November 17, 2003, Rodriguez won his first American League Most Valuable Player award. This is very similar to how instant messaging systems work. He has been married to the former Cynthia Scurtis since November 2, 2002: the couple's first child, Natasha Alexander, was born on November 18, 2004. It was the first of the massively popular peer-to-peer file sharing systems, although it was not fully peer-to-peer since it used central servers to maintain lists of connected systems and the files they provided, while actual transactions were conducted directly between machines. In 2003 he became the youngest player in major league history to reach 300 home runs, and, on June 8, 2005, he became the first to to hit 400 home runs before the age of 30. The final documents gave Shawn 30% control of the company, with the rest going to his uncle.

Rodriguez began his career as a shortstop, but switched positions to third base upon joining the Yankees. John Fanning of Hull, Massachusetts, who is Shawn's uncle, helped him incorporate the company. Starting his major league career with the Seattle Mariners, he signed an unprecedented free-agent deal with the Texas Rangers, before being traded to the New York Yankees. Fanning wanted an easier method of finding music than by searching IRC or Lycos. Alexander Emanuel Rodriguez (born July 27, 1975 in New York City), nicknamed A-Rod, is widely regarded as one of the best players in Major League Baseball today and at a young age is already being talked about among the all-time greats. Shawn Fanning first released the original Napster in the fall of 1999. The service was named Napster after Fanning's nickname.

Its technology allowed music fans to easily share MP3 format song files with each other, thus leading to the music industry's accusations of massive copyright violations. Although the original service was shut down by court order, it paved the way for decentralized P2P file-sharing programs, which have been much harder to control. Napster was the first widely-used peer-to-peer music sharing service, and it made a major impact on how people, especially college students, used the Internet. Napster is an online music service which was originally a file sharing service created by Shawn Fanning. March 16, 2004.

Austin, TX. SXSW Interactive Keynote Speech (http://blog.fastcompany.com/archives/2004/03/16/what_the_heck_is_social_networking.html#more). South by Southwest Festival. ^  Abrams, Jonathan. ^  Grimmelmann, James: "Blogster (http://www.laboratorium.net/archives/Blogster.html)", The Laboratorium, (July 18, 2003).

Ice Magazine, (179). MusicNet, PressPlay Fall Short (http://www.icemagazine.com/digital/dd_179.shtm). (February 2002). ^  Dube, Ric.

^  "Porn company offers to buy Napster (http://news.com.com/2100-1023-957784.html?tag=fd_top)", CNET News.com, (September 12, 2002). ^  Menta, Richard: "Did Napster Take Radiohead's New Album to Number 1? (http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2000/radiohead.html)", MP3 Newswire, (October 28, 2000). ^  Evangelista, Benny: "Napster runs out of lives – judge rules against sale (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/09/04/BU138263.DTL)", San Francisco Chronicle, (September 4, 2002). 2002).

3d 1091 (9th Cir. 5, 2001), aff’d, 284 F. Mar. LEXIS 2186 (N.D. Cal.

^  2001 US Dist. Press Release. Global Napster Usage Plummets, But New File-Sharing Alternatives Gaining Ground (http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?id=249). ^  Jupiter Media Metrix (July 20, 2001).

^  Borland, John: "Unreleased Madonna Single Slips On To Net (http://news.com.com/2100-1023-241341.html?legacy=cnet)", CNET News.com, (June 1, 2000). ^  Menta, Richard: "RIAA Sues Music Startup Napster for $20 Billion (http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/napster.html)", MP3 Newswire, (December 9, 1999). 2001). 2000), aff'd in part, rev'd in part, 239 F.3d 1004 (9th Cir.

Cal. 2d 896 (N.D. Supp. v. Napster, Inc., 114 F.

^  A & M Records, Inc.