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Shawn said he had no regrets about any of the choices he made. For someone who hadn't even planned on forming a company four years before, Shawn could by now take pride in the fact that he had done more to encourage young people to learn about technology than any number of presidential initiatives. "Before Napster, there was no such thing as a cool geek," said Gnutella developer Gene Kan. "Not Bill Gates, not Kevin Mitnick, not Steve Jobs. People got interested."

After the bankruptcy judge blocked the Bertelsmann sale in September 2002 and before Shawn's talks with Roxio Inc. two months later, he worked on a different idea. Shawn sought funding for what he described as a new peer-to-peer system for traffic on the Internet, one that would respect copyrights. One of his first recruits was Napster engineer Jordy Mendelson, who went scouting for San Mateo real estate. Shawn told Ritter that the system would be an open database, one that would help distribute what artists or others wanted to be sent into the world. Shawn also got some value from his former adventure, making a deal with a producer and selling the rights to his life story to MTV. The first project struck Ritter as problematic. But he told Shawn: "If anyone can do it, you can."

"Once Shawn's set his mind on something," Ritter said, "no one can talk him out of it."

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