A Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute freshman by the name of Jesse Jordan was targeted by the RIAA because he created a search engine called ChewPlastic.com. This engine allowed students to find MP3s on the college's computer network.
Jesse Jordan likened his search engine to Google but the RIAA said it was more like Napster. The RIAA sued Jordan and he settled by agreeing to contribute his $12,000 savings account.
Jordan says: "I didn't tell people what to share. I never promoted piracy." Basically, Napster set out to create its own network specifically for music. What I did was ran a search engine on a campus network [where] the network already existed."
