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Author's Note

I WAS NOT ONE OF THE THRONG OF JOURNALISTS WHO wrote dozens of stories about Napster during its peak from late 1999 through mid-2001. Like many, I figured that the exhaustive newspaper and magazine coverage was plenty. It was only in late 2000 that I met some of the talented people who worked at the company and realized how wrong I had been. Not long after, I came to the conclusion that Napster's real story could be told only in an investigative book, for three reasons.

First, for all of the surface coverage in the media, an astonishing amount of information was never made public. Most important, there was the unseen role of the man who incorporated Napster and essentially controlled it through its crucial first year, before the professionals took over. That man is not the enigmatic Shawn Fanning, the Time and Fortune magazine cover boy and the world's best-known hacker, whose message of free music eventually attracted as many as 70 million registered users. That man is Shawn's uncle John Fanning, who kept 70 percent of Napster's stock at its inception. John Fanning was a struggling but ambitious businessman with bad debts, a habit of mixing personal and company matters, and a confrontational style that brought him multiple lawsuits and a police record. By design, Shawn Fanning was pushed forward as the young spokesman for a computer-powered movement. But his uncle best represents what Napster became. And John Fanning was

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