Shawn Fanning

SAN FRANCISCO - Even in the annals of over-the-top celebrity weddings, Sean Parker's planned nuptials may take the cake. The Facebook Inc. billionaire who also co-founded Napster is dropping nearly $10 million on a fairy-tale wedding in Big Sur that includes a whimsical fantasy world featuring faux ruins, waterfalls, bridges and a gated cottage, a person familiar with the plans said. Just the stone dance floor in the woods surrounding the Ventana Inn & Spa will set the 34-year-old back $350,000, according to the website TMZ. The plants and flowers will cost $1 million.

SAN FRANCISCO - Even in the annals of over-the-top celebrity weddings, Sean Parker's planned nuptials may take the cake. The Facebook Inc. billionaire who also co-founded Napster is dropping nearly $10 million on a fairy-tale wedding in Big Sur that includes a whimsical fantasy world featuring faux ruins, waterfalls, bridges and a gated cottage, a person familiar with the plans said. Just the stone dance floor in the woods surrounding the Ventana Inn & Spa will set the 34-year-old back $350,000, according to the website TMZ. The plants and flowers will cost $1 million.

At 19, Napster founder Shawn Fanning graced the cover of Time magazine as the velveteen-haired frontman for online music piracy. Now, at 24, his second set is taking a different direction: Legitimizing the revolution Napster started. Fanning's new company, Snocap Inc., aims to transform the music-swapping free-for-all Napster sparked into a vast online marketplace where people can buy authorized tracks from each other.

Two of Napster's founders have rejoined forces to launch another start-up, this time a live social video network. The new service by Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning is intended to bring users together through their social networks and shared interests. To use Airtime, which was launched at an event Tuesday in New York City, users need only a Facebook account and a webcam. Once inside Airtime's website, users can choose to video chat or simply instant message with people from their Facebook friends list.

Mention the name Shawn Fanning, and most people still picture a kid in his dorm room at Northeastern University in Boston, cooking up Napster, a file-sharing website that let users trade songs for free and triggered a financial tsunami in the music industry. Fanning, now 28 and living in San Francisco, is not only long out of college, but he's also moved on to his third company, Rupture. (His second one, music licensing company Snocap, was sold in April 2008 to Imeem Inc.

Cable network MTV said it has reached a deal for the exclusive rights to the life story of Shawn Fanning, who created the controversial and wildly popular Napster file-sharing program. The movie, tentatively scheduled to air in 2003 or 2004, may star Fanning, now 21. Details of the deal were not available.

Record company EMI Group has signed an agreement with Snocap Inc., a legal music file-sharing company created by Shawn Fanning, who also created Napster, the most famous illegal file-sharing system. The agreement allows London-based EMI to use Snocap, a program that allows sharing but identifies copyrighted music files and prevents them from being traded unless the user pays a copyright fee. Terms were not disclosed.

If Napster Inc. goes out of business, it will leave two legacies: a dazzling invention that allowed millions to swap music over the Internet and one of the biggest botched financial opportunities of the Digital Age. In the wake of this month's federal court ruling that Napster helped consumers violate music copyrights, the company faces potentially bankrupting financial penalties and an injunction that could cripple its service.

Two years after leaving Napster Inc., company co-founder Sean Parker is reemerging as the head of a Silicon Valley consumer software firm that he hopes will provoke a lot less excitement. Mountain View, Calif.-based start-up Plaxo Inc. today will begin distributing a free system that sends e-mail messages to a user's correspondents, asking for updated contact information. Once received, the system automatically changes the user's Microsoft Outlook contact list to reflect the new data.

It was sheer anarchy. That's exactly what transpired in the late 1990s when teenage computer whiz and college dropout Shawn Fanning created Napster--a system that connected computer owners and allowed them to swap music files over the Internet. The $40-billion music industry reeled as a generation of young computer users, completely ignoring the notion of copyright, adopted a disturbing credo: Why pay for music you can get for free?

Mention the name Shawn Fanning, and most people still picture a kid in his dorm room at Northeastern University in Boston, cooking up Napster, a file-sharing website that let users trade songs for free and triggered a financial tsunami in the music industry. Fanning, now 28 and living in San Francisco, is not only long out of college, but he's also moved on to his third company, Rupture. (His second one, music licensing company Snocap, was sold in April 2008 to Imeem Inc.

Fast-growing Imeem Inc. said Monday that it had bought Snocap, a struggling online music service co-founded by Napster creator Shawn Fanning. By buying Snocap, Imeem, which owns a social-networking site that lets users listen to free music and watch videos, signaled its intention to offer new ways to search, discover and sample digital media. Analysts said it also might mean the firm will start selling music and other content. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Record company EMI Group has signed an agreement with Snocap Inc., a legal music file-sharing company created by Shawn Fanning, who also created Napster, the most famous illegal file-sharing system. The agreement allows London-based EMI to use Snocap, a program that allows sharing but identifies copyrighted music files and prevents them from being traded unless the user pays a copyright fee. Terms were not disclosed.

At 19, Napster founder Shawn Fanning graced the cover of Time magazine as the velveteen-haired frontman for online music piracy. Now, at 24, his second set is taking a different direction: Legitimizing the revolution Napster started. Fanning's new company, Snocap Inc., aims to transform the music-swapping free-for-all Napster sparked into a vast online marketplace where people can buy authorized tracks from each other.

Napster the brand is going legit under new owner Roxio Inc. Now Napster the person is trying to do the same with an Internet start-up that could, once again, have a far-reaching effect on the music business. Napster creator Shawn Fanning is looking for backers of technology he's developing that would let file-sharing networks distribute music without violating copyrights, people familiar with the project said.

It was sheer anarchy. That's exactly what transpired in the late 1990s when teenage computer whiz and college dropout Shawn Fanning created Napster--a system that connected computer owners and allowed them to swap music files over the Internet. The $40-billion music industry reeled as a generation of young computer users, completely ignoring the notion of copyright, adopted a disturbing credo: Why pay for music you can get for free?

Twenty million Napster fans can't be wrong. Or can they? A federal judge will decide next week whether Napster's song-swap technology is illegal and he could temporarily shut down the Web site until the matter is resolved in court later this year.

Napster the brand is going legit under new owner Roxio Inc. Now Napster the person is trying to do the same with an Internet start-up that could, once again, have a far-reaching effect on the music business. Napster creator Shawn Fanning is looking for backers of technology he's developing that would let file-sharing networks distribute music without violating copyrights, people familiar with the project said.

Two years after leaving Napster Inc., company co-founder Sean Parker is reemerging as the head of a Silicon Valley consumer software firm that he hopes will provoke a lot less excitement. Mountain View, Calif.-based start-up Plaxo Inc. today will begin distributing a free system that sends e-mail messages to a user's correspondents, asking for updated contact information. Once received, the system automatically changes the user's Microsoft Outlook contact list to reflect the new data.

Cable network MTV said it has reached a deal for the exclusive rights to the life story of Shawn Fanning, who created the controversial and wildly popular Napster file-sharing program. The movie, tentatively scheduled to air in 2003 or 2004, may star Fanning, now 21. Details of the deal were not available.