Word: napster
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...girlfriend now, a fellow 19-year-old who he is sure likes him for him and not for Napster. He won't give her name, and most of his co-workers don't even know about her. "When I'm around her," Fanning says, "I don't have to think about the press or about Napster...
Since the lawsuit began, Napster has become enveloped in something of a siege mentality, an us-vs.-them attitude toward the record labels and the press that has forced Fanning to retreat even farther into his shell. He has to monitor carefully what he says to whom and even what clothes he wears. "The cdc [the Cult of the Dead Cow, a hacker collective] guys sent me a shirt, and the lawyers told me I shouldn't wear it," he says. "It's just so tightly controlled...
Meanwhile, there is another big idea he is dying to work out, another program he has been thinking about and tinkering with that, he says, could be bigger than Napster. What he is seeking to recapture, he will tell you, are those days back in Hull, when it was just Fanning and Napster. When there were no lawsuits and no one to answer to and he was left alone to work on this little program of his, this idea that he would launch into the world...
Hedgepath's company doesn't deal in music, as so many injured copyright holders do these days. It sells ornate stitching patterns, and the files that are being traded Napster-style are templates for hobbyists looking to make pillows decorated with cuddly dogs and flowery pastoral scenes...
Make no mistake: the implications of the peer-to-peer file-sharing movement that Napster pioneered go way beyond pop music. There are already Napster-like services for videos and full-length feature films. Books, blueprints, vintage comics and stock photos may be next in line. Even newspapers and magazines are worried. (Hey, you did pay for this article, didn't you?) The fact is--as the stitching-pattern makers learned the hard way--there's no corner of the so-called content industry, no bit of intellectual property, no idea, that isn't in danger of being Napsterized...