The Man Who Hijacked Napster
from the great-read dept
Last year we posted an article from Red Herring that mentioned some of John Fanning's "character issues", but this excerpt from the new book, All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster takes things to an entirely different level. It talks about how John Fanning (Shawn's uncle) basically forced Shawn to give up 70% of the company to him, and then how his greed, stubbornness and lies, tended to cause more trouble at each step along the way for the company - all done without any bad publicity directed specifically at him. Update: The publicity is in overdrive for this book apparently. Salon.com is running a different excerpt of the book about how an early supporter of Napster changed his mind. They're also running a review of the book that focuses a lot on the John Fanning issue.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
