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too much risk. Lilienthal decided that if he were going to try to steer Napster out of its legal predicament, he would need to make sure Fanning was not in majority control, with veto power over anything Lilienthal might do. And so began weeks of tortured negotiations during the summer of 1999 as Lilienthal and Grosfeld offered Fanning more and more money, finally more than $1 million, to whittle his stake in Napster down to about a third.

If they had succeeded in cutting a deal with Fanning, things might have turned out differently. Lilienthal and Draper Atlantic both thought the legal issues could have been managed, perhaps even if Napster had stayed in the music-distribution business. “We were going to run this thing and then go to the record industry and cut a deal,” Lilienthal said. “One side of me thinks the record industry was out to shut everything down. Then part of me thinks that at a certain point in the process, they would have been willing to cut a deal. I would like to think I would have been able to pull something off.”

As the negotiations between Grosfeld, Lilienthal, and Fanning dragged on, Grosfeld pursued another angle as well—extracting Shawn from Napster Inc. Some lawyers Grosfeld spoke to believed that Shawn wasn’t legally bound to give his invention to the company because of the haphazard way in which it had been formed. “He’s killing you,” Grosfeld told Shawn on one call. “You can start over.” Grosfeld even looked for apartments where Shawn might live in Manhattan, away from his uncle’s influence. Parker joined the debate, making similar arguments to his friend about the damage Fanning was doing to their cause, but he got nowhere. Shawn explained that his uncle had helped him when no one else would, that he had given him that first computer. “Shawn had an emotional attachment to him. He was the only real father figure,” Parker concluded.

So the investors’ talks with Fanning continued. At times, it seemed like Fanning had agreed to an offer, or nearly had. They got as close as two percentage points apart on what Fanning’s remaining equity would be. Then, without warning, Fanning would turn into a car salesman. “How much do you have?” he asked Grosfeld at one point. “How much could you wire me today?” Fanning also tried to drive a wedge between