Reborn in 2000, starting from the university website

The private rooms at the New Century Internet Cafe were filled with smoke, resembling a hermitage for cultivating immortality.

Apart from Liu Jing, who went shopping with his girlfriend, and Jiang Shuo, who always went to the library to study, the remaining six people set up six computers to prepare for a gunfight. But now, after hearing Zhang Jian's shout, all six of them crowded in front of Zhang Jian's computer monitor, their eyes wide open as if they wanted to eat someone alive.

The third brother, Zhang Jian, banged his mouse on the table, pointing at the constantly fluctuating numbers on the back end: "It's broken! It's broken again! 130,000! Sixth brother, look, there's even an IP address from France! These must be international students, right?"

On the screen, the green access curve resembles a cobra with its head held high, soaring straight into the sky. Since the addition of the three small modules—perpetual calendar, weather forecast, and stock trading information—user dwell time and refresh frequency have doubled, and the return rate is frighteningly high, making it a gateway for at least 20,000 people to access the internet.

"This means traffic from outside the province is coming in." The fourth brother, Wan Lianghao, swallowed the iced tea he hadn't yet finished. "I just checked the backend logs, and there are quite a few access records from Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. Our 'Sailing' navigation has truly set sail."

The room erupted in cheers, and Zhang Qingheng, the seventh brother, was so excited that he wanted to bang his head against the monitor.

Bai Yuhang returned to his seat, leaned back, twirled a lighter in his hand, and showed little joy on his face.

He propped his legs up on the computer case, his tone icy: "Stop acting so naive. 130,000 pageviews is just a small site nationwide. We've only got an early advantage, sneaking in a bit before the giants realize what's happening. Once portal sites like Sina and Sohu react, they can crush us with the tip of their little finger."

A bucket of cold water was poured over the room, and the temperature dropped a few degrees.

"What can we do then? Can we really fight Sina?" Zhang Jian muttered indignantly.

"Let's not confront them head-on, we'll play dirty." Bai Yuhang stood up, threw on his coat, and said, "Let's go, that's it, let's go back to the company. There are too many people around here, let's go back for a meeting."

The group greeted the internet cafe manager, Wang Jun, one by one, and then left the internet cafe.

On the way to the office, the eldest brother carefully selected ten boxes of braised pork, tiger-skin green peppers, and braised eggs from a roadside lunch stall. The six of them squatted in the newly opened "office" on Taikoo Street and wolfed down their food.

Bai Yuhang threw the disposable lunchbox into the trash can, picked up a black marker, and quickly drew a circle on the newly bought whiteboard, adding two lines on either side.

"Headphones?" Wan Lianghao burped. "Sixth Brother, are you planning to sell Walkmans online?"

"Nonsense! What's the point of selling that?" Bai Yuhang tapped the icon with the tip of his marker. "What do netizens want to do most online these days? Besides chatting and reading the news, they just want to have fun. The internet is too quiet right now; we need to make it lively."

He wrote three letters below the icon: MP3.

"I know this thing!" Jiao Liwei, the eldest, exclaimed, his eyes lighting up. "Winamp player, you know. I play music in the dorm every day when I'm reading, but after almost a year of school, I only have two songs downloaded on our dorm computer, 'Too Softhearted' and 'Sad Pacific Ocean.' The rest of the songs are copied from pirated CDs. Downloading online is too much of a hassle; nine out of ten links are broken, and the remaining one takes half an hour to download. And when you finally listen to it, some are just bad files with only half of them, and there are also format problems that often require conversion."

"This is the pain point." Bai Yuhang drew a funnel on the whiteboard. "There are very few music resources online now. The old cassette tapes are no longer keeping up with the times, and music websites are just garbage dumps. Netizens listen to whoever they want based entirely on their own habits, or what they hear from loudspeakers on the street, or word of mouth. What we need to do is create filters, charts, and recommendation lists. We'll create a dedicated channel page for MP3 search, categorization, and sorting. We won't produce songs; we'll just be the porters. We'll grab all the downloadable, fast-access links from across the internet and sort them by artist, album, and chart."

"As long as users want to listen to music, they can come here, search for it, and download it with a single click." Bai Yuhang's eyes were gleaming. "This data usage is ten times greater than checking the weather forecast."

The people in the room listened with great excitement, as if they could already see countless netizens wearing headphones and swaying.

"etc."

Yang Bo, the second oldest student who hadn't spoken until now, pushed up his glasses, his brows furrowing deeply. He was a member of the school's legal aid association and was quite sensitive to this kind of thing.

"Sixth Brother, I think there's something fishy going on here." Yang Bo pointed to the MP3 Bai Yuhang had written. "Weather forecasts and stock prices are public data, so we can just arrest them if we want. But this song is copyrighted. If the record company sues us for copyright infringement, our small company won't be able to pay the damages even if we sell everything we own. We might even have to go back to the government."

The atmosphere froze instantly.

Bai Yuhang gave Yang Bo an approving look, which was also why he was so determined to bring the second brother into the group.

"You're right, but not entirely." Bai Yuhang turned around and wrote five words on the whiteboard: Safe Harbor Principle.

"The internet is still legally uncharted territory. The DMCA has relevant rules, called the 'safe harbor principle,' which is the core principle for resolving disputes between internet service providers and copyright holders. Our music site is free and doesn't store anything. All the songs and files are on other people's servers; we only provide 'links' and 'directories.' We're a road sign, not a warehouse." Bai Yuhang tapped the whiteboard. "This is called deep linking. Add a disclaimer at the bottom of the page: 'The resources on this site are for learning and exchange purposes only. Please delete them within 24 hours of downloading. Please purchase the original version.'"

"This...can it really work?" Yang Bo hesitated. "Isn't this just burying your head in the sand?"

"That's called skirting the rules." Bai Yuhang laughed, a laugh that resembled that of an old fox. "Before the laws are perfected, this is a regulatory loophole. Once we grow big and accumulate millions of users, we'll have leverage. Then we can bring in investors to become shareholders, buy their copyrights, and negotiate revenue sharing with record companies—that's a different story. Right now? Let's grow wildly and dominate the market first."

Yang Bo pondered for a long time before finally nodding: "Although it's a bit thuggish, there is indeed room for defense from a legal perspective."

"Let's do it!" Boss Jiao Liwei slapped his thigh. "As long as we don't go to jail or get fined, what's there to be afraid of!"

Just as the group was getting ready to get down to business, the rusty iron door to the office was suddenly pushed open with a loud bang.

Liu Jing, the fifth brother, rushed in, panting heavily. His down jacket was zipped up, his forehead was covered in sweat, and he was clutching a brightly colored flyer in his hand.

"Sixth Brother! Something's happened! Something terrible has happened!"

Liu Jing slammed the flyer on the table, making the ground shake.

"These bastards are absolutely shameless!"

Bai Yuhang looked down.

The flyer design was a bit rough, but the website screenshot on it looked so familiar it was nauseating. The blue and white color scheme, the three-column layout, and even the positions of the newly launched "Perpetual Calendar" and "Weather Forecast" were exactly the same.

The only difference is that the logo at the top of the page is not the blue "Qihang Navigation", but four big black characters - "Jisu Navigation".

"It was done by seniors in the Computer Science Department at the University of Technology. It's called something like 'Geek Alliance'." Liu Jing grabbed a glass of cold water from the table and gulped it down. "They're handing out flyers to everyone they see on campus, and they're even putting up posters in internet cafes in the city to talk business. They claim it's developed by the official technical team at the University of Technology, and that Qihang is just a 'wildcat' operation. Now several internet cafe owners are asking me if this Speed ​​Navigation is a branch of ours."

The air inside the room instantly dropped to freezing point.

Zhang Jian took the flyer, glanced at it, and snapped his chopsticks in anger: "Isn't this blatant plagiarism? They probably even copied the code structure from us! Have they no shame?"

Bai Yuhang picked up the flyer and looked at the glaring slogan on it: "Lightning-fast navigation, a homepage that understands netizens better."

He didn't get angry; instead, he smiled.

But there was a chill in that smile that sent shivers down one's spine.

"Finally here." Bai Yuhang crumpled the flyer into a ball and accurately tossed it into the trash can in the corner, where it bounced into the soup in a lunchbox. "I was afraid no one would play with us. Since some people want to play the imposter, let's teach them what the real deal is."