点对点拓荒者Napster公司的口述史

    1.创意

    首先，让我们把时钟拨回到1999年春天。当时还不到20岁的肖恩•范宁，在一个互联网中继聊天室(Internet Relay Chat)闲逛。他登上了一个名为w00w00的黑客网络频道。他用网名“Napster”——一个源自篮球场的绰号，有个家伙喷出这个脏字取笑他的头发——告诉这个小组，他正在致力于开发一个可以让人们更加容易交换音乐文件的软件。他向20岁的安全程序员乔丹•里特尔求助，后者的网名叫“Nocarrier”。

    乔丹•里特尔（Napster的创始架构师）：Napster的根源其实在计算机安全世界，而且是地下的。我、马特•科诺菲尔（互联网中继聊天室的另一位黑客）和其他几个朋友一起创建了这个小组。范宁，也就是Napster，也是这些人中的一位。他算是这个小组的外围人员吧。我此前从来没有跟他深入交流过。范宁开始就他正在从事的这个项目向小组求助。我记得，它当时叫音乐网(Music Net)。

    作为技术专家和黑客，我们一直共享内容和数据。如果我们想要音乐，我们会去互联网中继聊天室的某个频道，鼓捣出一个机器人程序，用它下载音乐。要得到这种东西，依然需要费一些周折。所以，范宁产生了一个富于青春活力的想法：伙计，这太恶心了，无聊透顶。我想创造一个使这一切更容易的玩意。

    艾达尔•阿里（Napster公司高级技术总监）：我不得不承认，我并没有立刻意识到Napster 的重要性。我所说的立刻，指的是范宁第一次向我描述它的时候。他大约劝说我了20分钟，我随后恍然大悟，突然意识到这是一个多么了不起的创意，所以就产生了帮助他的兴趣。（财富中文网）

    译者：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.