Word: napster
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...Like its namesake (Lawrence Fishburne's character in The Matrix), Morpheus has appeared almost out of nowhere to lead true believers into a different (and to some, terrifying) world. Here in Morpheus' private matrix, music files are free, easy to find, superfast to download. And unlike its doomed predecessor Napster, Morpheus is likely to escape the long arm of the Agents (a.k.a. music industry lawyers). In other words...
...Former Napster devotees - 60 million of my closest filesharing friends - have been glumly awaiting The One from the moment Shawn Fanning's brainchild felt the back of the music label's legal hand. BearShare, LimeWire, Aimster, FreeNet - all of these alternative MP3 swapping services have had their moment in the media spotlight. Plenty of pundits, yours truly included, were eager to anoint at least one of them as Napster's successor . All had their own get-out-of-jail-free cards, in that they had no central server (unlike Napster) and therefore no way of knowing you were deliberately seeking...
...Trouble is - let's be honest here - they all pretty much sucked (unlike Napster). Not one of them was likely to pick up 60 million users and the kind of dazzlingly diverse and comprehensive music choice you get on a network that size. BearShare was the best of a crop of programs that used Gnutella technology; but the way Gnutella works means you're largely limited to rifling through the collections of 25,000 virtual neighbors. Close but no cigar, as Thomas Dolby sang (and you'd have little chance of finding that track, for one). Aimster had the neat...
...course, that would require working on the honor system, at least at this point in the technological evolution. "And looking at the way the public adapted to Napster," says Adler, "obviously if they can get something desirable for free, without compensating the producer or creator, many people are glad to do that...
...Just as Napster made it easy to get songs without buying a CD, publishers fear a proliferation of downloaded material that can easily be obtained for free. Libraries, meanwhile, are getting nervous about how, exactly, the publishers will try to control the bottom line - will they have to pay extra to maintain rights to materials, instead of buying a book and owning it forever...