If you've downloaded a song in the past few years, it's in large part because of Justin Frankel. Seven years ago, when he was just eighteen, he invented Winamp, the first software program that made it easy to play digital music on your computer. A few years later, he created Gnutella: the vast, and vastly controversial, online network that lets you swap songs. The fact that Frankel secretly did the latter while working at America Online, the company behind his multimillion-dollar buyout, made him both the Internet's greatest punk -- and hero. Now he's about to punk the industry again.

That's because, after years of being muzzled by AOL for igniting the pirate nation, Frankel is breaking his silence. "This is an environment where I don't get to do what I want to do," he says. What he wants to do is even more radical than Gnutella. And to do this, he needs to break free. "Eighty percent of the people at AOL are clueless," he says. When I ask him if they have anything to fear by him leaving, he replies, half-jokingly, "If anything, they have more to fear when I'm working for them."

Frankel kills the lights and gets behind the drums. Despite my rusty chops, he encourages me to strap on an electric guitar. "Things I've done are often interpreted as anti-record-industry," he says, "but it's really about empowering people." [link]