When the Internet was merely in its infancy stage, modem connections were at a plodding pace. At the time, the transmission and sharing of text information was the main catalyst of its usage. With the advent of more powerful microprocessors and the prevalence of the personal computer in households across the world, audio and video files jumped into the fray. It became fashionable for everyone to begin swapping the latest hits on radio, or at least samples of it, and to share your favorite video files. But as files became larger and larger, managing, transmitting, and downloading them became a big hassle; you had to clear enough space in your hard drive to make room for the file and then wait to download the entire file before playing it.

During the analog generation, copyright issues were not a huge thorn in the entertainment industry's side because the reproduced quality was not unexceptional. But when the digital generation supplanted analog technology, copyright issues have become a very important issue because of the superior reproduction quality.

In 2000, a legal court battle was waged over MP3 technology and the swapping of such copyrighted audio files over the Internet which circumvented monetary transactions and thus excluded any type of revenue for artists or studios. Movie files would not be too far behind.

Even though the music industry won this initial battle, both the music and movie industry required a technology with good quality that would not harm their profits and protect studio and artists' creative rights in return; a technology that would transmit only temporary data and not require viewers to download the entire file. This way, the content provider would govern all aspects of content distribution. Streaming is this technology.