Shawn Fanning, John Fanning, and Sean Parker co-founded Napster and launched the site in June 1999. The service was named after one of Fanning’s nicknames, referencing his hairstyle.

It was on this day, July 31, in 2001 that Napster, the highly popular file sharing website that made it easy to download music, was shut down by court order.

At the time of its debut, other networks already facilitated file sharing on the Internet. Napster’s MP3 music files and user-friendly interface, however, generated an enormous following. At one point, the service had 25 million users and 80 million songs for download. The site was shut down due to copyright violations, but the brand survived. It was rebranded as a music service called Napster 2.0, and in December 2011, Napster merged with another digital music service, Rhapsody.