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Preface

I was a writer and producer at RealNetworks in late 1996. The company was called Progressive Networks at the time, and we were on the leading edge of the Internet boom. I read a news story one day about a small radio station in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. The station was recording its news broadcasts in English and putting them on the Internet, using Progressive Networks’ RealAudio technology, which had been out for about 18 months.

Students were rebelling in Belgrade against the government of Slobodan Milosevic, the authoritarian president of Yugoslavia. Milosevic had shut down the radio station, called B92. But his police didn’t understand that the news about the students was getting out via the Internet. Progressive Networks decided to help ...