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on overoptimistic legal counsel, was picking the wrong person as CEO. The article failed to mention that Fanning had vetoed earlier potential CEOs alarmed at the size of his stake, driven away more substantive and larger venture offers, overruled many of Richardson's softer approaches to the industry, including the New Artist Program and the Gigabeat alliance, and generally been the one piloting Napster and his nephew into increasingly certain oblivion.

Worst of all was one simple, and false, declarative sentence: “Richardson declined to comment.” She had never been reached to defend herself. The lead writer on the story had sent e-mail to her old company address, [email protected], an inquiry that Richardson didn't receive. No reporter had bothered calling directory assistance for her home number in Palo Alto. To have her reputation savaged when she never had full control of the company was nearly more than Richardson could take. “To see the dream of these kids be undone by one greedy bastard, then have her reputation dragged through the mud, it was an unbelievable thing to have to go through,” said Xtime's former CEO and current chairman, John Lee, who is still close to his former girlfriend. “If she could have given everything to the company and made no money, but had the kids be made whole, she would have done it in a heartbeat.”

Richardson wrote an anguished e-mail to Amram that she never sent. “As much as I suspected one day I would be pegged as the scapegoat for Napster,” she wrote, “I wasn't able to quit when I learned of all the problems at the company. I had said I'd get a job done, and by God I was going to do it. Also, there was no one to turn the company over to. Shawn, John Fanning, Bill Bales? After all the very reason I was CEO was because no one would back anyone else. . . . I know none of you have control over John Fanning and Bill Bales, so there is no blame to anyone at Napster at all. It is a situation I got myself in and there are consequences that I also now have to live with. My career may have ended this past weekend. . . . In my heart and soul I know I gave everything I had to help two bright-eyed, inexperienced teenagers get closer to their dream. And at the end of the day, this is all that matters really, to me anyway. I always said running Napster with all its press and lawsuits was dwarfed by the challenge of working with John Fanning.”