Word: gnutella
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Other services, such as a program called Gnutella, lack a centralized server and are thus much harder to block--technologically or legally...
Technology may soon make the decision in this particular lawsuit obsolete; new programs known as "Gnutella" and "FreeNet" may allow the Napster-like sharing of all types of data, not just MP3 files, and such services would be difficult to shut down because they would not rely, as does Napster, on a central server for searches. However, if carried to its conclusion, the spirit in which the lawsuit was filed would make universities into electronic gatekeepers, watching each packet of data sent across the network and monitoring students' activities online for fear of being held legally responsible...
Napster, the most popular of these software clients, has been downloaded more than 5 million times, causing its parent company's CEO, Eileen Richardson, to boast, "We're the fastest-growing company in the history of the Web." Gnutella, an open-source variant of Napster created by ex-hacker and current AOL employee Justin Frankel, 21, caused a buzz last week when AOL scurried to pull the software, calling it "an unauthorized free-lance project." AOL is planning to merge with Time Warner, a major player in the music industry. But by the time AOL yanked Gnutella, enough copies...
...piracy on an unprecedented scale." Yet no pirated files ever sit on the Napster server--Fanning considered legal liability when he wrote the software--so those charges may not stick. Meanwhile, college campuses, claiming that Napster is sucking up too much bandwidth, have begun blocking access to the site. Gnutella, which doesn't require a centralized server, will be harder to shut down. But even if there is a way to disable Gnutella, so what? "Every time a 42-year-old figures out how to lock something up," says Griffin, "a 14-year-old is going to figure...