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.

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