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ened, Bales felt more comfortable doing business the way he saw fit, including in his efforts to recruit new executives. High on his list was Rob Lord, the young director of online strategy at Nullsoft, maker of the Winamp MP3 player. Lord had first heard from Napster when John Fanning called him during the summer of 1999 and proposed an alliance, since most Napster users already relied on Winamp software to play their songs. Lord looked at the site and discussed what Napster was doing with his handful of colleagues. “We agreed very quickly that they would be sued off the planet,” Lord said. In October, Lord’s name came up as a possible hire in an executive staff meeting at Napster. Richardson was worried that Nullsoft was more likely to be a competitor than an ally, and she wanted as tight a lid as possible on what Napster was doing, since Napster’s system wasn’t that hard to imitate. The important thing was to maintain the critical mass that came with being the biggest provider, she felt. Led by Richardson, everyone at the meeting agreed not to go after Lord.

Yet Bales went ahead anyway, swearing Sean Parker to secrecy and taking him along to meet Lord. Parker, aware that Bales had his own relationship with Fanning, wasn’t sure what to do and elected to keep quiet. Lord told Justin Frankel and the others at Nullsoft that he had no interest in leaving but would agree to a meeting to see what Napster was up to. Richardson found out about the get-together later and came to a second dinner with Lord to close the loop. There she made Lord sign a nondisclosure agreement, and to the extent that Lord’s real mission had been to gather intelligence, he was soon frustrated. “They weren’t being forthcoming enough to even recruit me. Which made me think the situation was even worse than I’d imagined,” Lord said. “If they had given me a great story, I might have been interested, but I didn’t hear it.” Lord also showed less optimism than the Napster crew did about the company’s prospects. “What about the lawsuit?” he asked, long before the record industry acted. Richardson looked stunned. “What lawsuit?” she asked. The lawsuit that is obviously going to be filed, he replied. Richardson was embarrassed. “He knew a lot more about copyright and intellectual property law than I did,” she said.

The dinner didn’t lead anywhere. But Shawn developed his own rela-

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