From Techtv
Remember the good old days of the dot-com era, when a little file swapping engine named Napster made it easy, free, and fun to steal copyright music off the Net?
That hip cat in headphones used to be the face and logo of a revolutionary company led by a 19-year-old visionary named Shawn Fanning. He almost single-handedly changed the way people listened to music.
Today it’s the auction block. Welcome to the final face and resting place of Napster. Its destiny lies in the hands of auctioneers taking bids at the Santa Clara, California, Mariott.
“Everybody wants to own something from one of the largest bankruptcies of the dot-com era,” said Lee Danhauer, project manager for auctioneer Dovebid.
The era of the free online lunch came to a bittersweet end Wednesday when the last of Napster’s assets were auctioned off. The company’s technology was purchased by software maker Roxio in November.
“We dreamed it’d be a new way to distribute music — allow users to share and have a community, and pay the artist and the rights-holders,” said Lyn Jensen, Napster’s former CFO. “It didn’t work.”
Dovebid did a complete sweep of the old Napster offices, which were abandoned after the company was sued out of existence by the recording industry last year.
“There’s a number of items I didn’t even realize we owned, and as I look at them now I wonder why we ever owned them,” said Chris Phenner, Napster’s former director of business development. “Some other things we grew a personal attachment to, like the printer we used to fight over in that office.”
At the auction there were about 1,022 lots for bid — about 3,000 to 4,000 items. What did they include? Memorabilia, T-shirts, hats, mousepads, beanbags, and pingpong tables.
Most of the people at the auction were auction regulars, but a few Napster employees stopped by to pick up something to remember.
“Probably a hat and a T-shirt — just some good memorabilia, but it’s as much to see the people than it is to get the stuff,” Phenner said.
But mostly they came to watch the final nail put in the company coffin.
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