Shawn Fanning

Shawn 'Napster' Fanning (born November 22, 1980, Brockton, Massachusetts), is a computer programmer. He is best known for developing Napster, the first popular peer-to-peer filesharing platform, in 1998.
Shawn worked summers in Hull at John Fanning's (Uncle) Internet company, Chess.net, often sleeping on the couch. 'I was just getting into programming, so I spent a lot of my time just fiddling with projects and hanging out.' During this work, Shawn Fanning spent months writing the code for Napster, a program that could provide an easy way to download music.
After graduating from Harwich High School in 1998, Shawn enrolled at Boston's Northeastern University. Shawn rarely attended class and spent Christmas break working at the Hull chess.net office with his uncle John pushing himself to get the napster system completed. The system was launched in early 1999. Later he appeared on the cover of Wired magazine and rose to fame. Soon after, however, Napster was the target of several music industry-backed lawsuits, which ultimately ended up causing the cessation of the service. Best Buy purchased Napster in a line of succession from companies such as Roxio, and Sony-BMG.