Thomas Middelhoff liked the Post House because the clubby Manhattan restaurant seemed just the place in which to persuade Shawn Fanning that the two men had a lot more in common than a lawsuit. It was early September. Middelhoff, 47, chairman of Bertelsmann, the world's third largest media conglomerate, had never met Fanning, 20, whose ingenious file-sharing program, Napster, had created the world's biggest online free-music community--one that was costing Middelhoff and the rest of the music industry many millions of dollars in lost sales. But by the time they tucked into their steaks, the code-writing whiz was digesting the media...
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