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Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure star Alex Winter is developing a documentary about the controversial music downloading service Napster.

The actor will team up with U.S. TV network VH1 to direct a film about the website, which was founded during the 1990s by Shawn Fanning.

Napster was eventually shut down due to copyright infringement issues, but Winter insists the free file-sharing site sparked a revolution in technology and social media and its story deserves to be told.

He tells Deadline.com, "The rise and fall of Napster and the birth of peer-to-peer file-sharing technology created by Shawn Fanning when he was a college student, changed music to movies, and made possible everything from... WikiLeaks to the iPod and Facebook.

"It became an expression of youth revolt, and contributed to a complete shift in how information, media and governments work. And it is a fascinating human story, where this 18-year-old kid invents a peer-to-peer file-sharing system, and brings it to the world six months later."

Justin Timberlake portrayed Fanning in hit movie The Social Network.