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of a news update about Napster—the first time they had heard the name of their company broadcast. “We weren't sure that we'd really seen it,” Parker said. “We were pointing at each other and rolling on the floor. Practically all my dreams were playing out before my eyes.” There were other causes for celebration inside Napster's offices. One of the best nights was in November 1999, when Ritter's team found a bug that had been keeping a lid on the amount of traffic on a single Linux server. For months, the number of users simultaneously connected to a server couldn't rise past a thousand. The problem was both a frustrating technical challenge and a serious issue of expense, since it meant that Napster had to buy more and more servers to keep up with demand. After the team finally figured out was wrong and replaced the bad code in the kernel, it was like wrenching the valve off a fire hydrant. The number of users and songs listed on a single computer doubled immediately. Another night, the fourth version of Napster's search engine once again doubled the amount of traffic each server could bear. Ritter, Shawn, and Ali Aydar blasted rapper Dr. Dre and danced on the tables, mugging for each other's cameras. Ritter called Jessie Garrehy to come join them, and she drove to the office in her pajamas.

The Napster youth named the servers after bands, appropriately reflecting the temperamental machines' personalities. Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Radiohead all had their strengths and weaknesses. And in the e-mail signatures automatically appended to their messages, the employees said a lot about what they saw as Napster's role in the scheme of things and their roles within Napster. Shawn didn't use a signature. Parker used a stamp that identified himself as Founder. Ritter's and Richardson's read: “Napster—Music at Internet Speed.” Many had Che Guevara screen savers on their PCs, and the hours many kept were rock-’n’-roll erratic, often starting at midday and running past midnight.

Napster's employees were far from the only ones in Silicon Valley who thought they were part of a revolution—it's just that they were among the precious few who were correct. Dot-commers sold groceries online, electronically coordinated weddings, and gave away free Internet access, and they all thought they were changing the world. The year after Napster's birth was the peak of the Internet frenzy and all the hype that went with it. And the hype was key. Perhaps no profession in those heady

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