Sean Parker (born December 3, 1979) is an American internet technology businessman and entrepreneur. He co-founded Napster, Plaxo, and Causes, and was a part of Facebook. He reportedly continues to assist Facebook in an unofficial capacity.
Shawn Fanning (born November 22, 1980) is an American computer programer, seriel entreprenuer, and angel investor. He is famous for developing Napster, one of the first popular peer to peer ("P2P") file sharing platforms, in 1998. The popularity of Napster was widespread and Fanning was featured on the cover of Time magazine. The site in its initial free P2P incarnation was shut down in 2001 after the company's unsuccessful appeal of court orders arising from its encouraging the illegal sharing of copyrighted material. A paid subscription version of the site followed, and remains the current format. Following his involvement with Napster, he joined, and invested in, a number of early-stage technology startup companies.
Napster was an online music peer to peer files sharing service created by Shawn Fanning while he was attending Northestern University in Boston. The service, named after Fanning's hairstyle-based nickname, operated between June 1999 and July 2001. Its technology allowed people to easily share theirs MP3 files with other participants, bypassing the established market for such songs and thus leading to massive copyright violation of music and film media as well as other intellectual property.
Shawn Fanning, the creator, and Sean parker, his business partner, first released the original Napster in June 1999. Fanning wanted an easier method of finding music than by searching IRC or Lycos. John Fanning of Hull, Massachusetts—Shawn's uncle—ran all aspects of the company's operations for a period from its office on Nantasket Beach. The final agreement gave Shawn 30% control of the company, with the rest going to his uncle. It was the first of the massively popular peer-to-peer file distribution systems, although it was not fully peer-to-peer since it used central servers to maintain lists of connected systems and the files they provided, while actual transactions were conducted directly between machines.
0 comments