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worked and that it was vitally important. So it is surprising in some ways that major corporations were only pursuing ideas like Kan's and not offering to buy Napster outright as well. Once in charge, such buyers could have let the courtroom gamble ride, adapted the system for different uses, or licensed it to other companies to apply as they wanted. Back in the already long-ago summer of 1999, entrepreneur Ben Lilienthal had wanted to do just that. But by now, it was simply too late. Millions of consumers would have howled if the switch had been turned off. Big companies weren't conditioned to risk losing a mammoth verdict, which might have been applied even for wrongdoing before they took control of the firm. And when there were expressions of interest, Eileen Richardson was reluctant to do much talking: If she had, the big companies could have figured out how to copy what Napster had done. Instead, the besieged firm would have to make its own way, raising money from the professional risk-takers, the venture-capitalist kingpins of Silicon Valley.

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