P2P Hydra May Succeed Napster
By Antonette Goroch
from the March 19, 2001 issue of Broadband Week
Peer-to-peer file sharing giant Napster may be identified by its headphone-clad logo, but these days a more suitable symbol might be the Hydra. Like the mythological beast that grew multiple heads to replace any that were cut off, industry watchers predict that the court-mandated clampdown on Napster's music-sharing activities music will further fuel the already large host of similar P2P music operations, creating a monster for the record companies trying to slay them.
There literally are dozens of other services from Aimster to Gnutella (see chart) already tapping into the 60 million users Napster has corralled to date. Don't necessarily expect them to boom overnight, though. Webnoize researcher Gregor Rhoda notes that Napster has not been put out of business, only limited in its activities until it creates a compensation scheme with the record companies whose music flows over its platform.
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Alternatives to Napster in Peer-to-Peer File Sharing
Scour.com
http://www.scour.com
Centralized service like Napster, routes file requests for a range of multimedia files through a central corporate server. Formerly one of the largest Napster-like services, it was sued by the recording industry and shut down under bankruptcy protection. The new owner, CenterSpan Communications Corp., plans to launch a new ``legal'' version of the song exchange by end-March.
iMesh
http://www.iMesh.com
Routes requests through a central server, and offers access to video and image files. Offers the ability to complete downloads even if the original owner goes offline while the file is being transferred.
Aimster
http://www.aimster.com
Decentralized "plug in" for AOL Instant Messenger allows users to view and swap files with those on their buddy list. The newest version of the software allows the user to piggyback on other file transfer services, including AOL, ICQ, Napster, OpenNap, or Gnutella, among others.
Gnutella
http://gnutella.wego.com
Decentralized network without a central server, allows file viewing and sharing among users. Volunteer-run open source program can be chaotic and extremely slow download times. Also can be blocked by network operators. Various derivative programs such as Gnotella, Gnewtella, Newtella, Mactella, have also emerged in recent months.
OpenNap
http://opennet.sourceforge.net
OpenNap is an open source version of Napster that looks and works basically like Napster, but allows various individual sites to create their own interlocking Napster networks. Written by programmers who reverse-engineered the Napster protocol.
Napigator
http://www.napigator.com
Enables searching across a variety of Napster-like servers, including Napster.
Angry Coffee
http://www.angrycoffee.com
Angry Coffee's "percolator" enables searching across a variety of Napster-like servers (though Napster, ironically, banned Angry Coffee from searching its network last year) and couples search finds with new music picks of similar genre. Voluntarily withdrew the software to avoid lawsuits. Plans to relaunch commerce version this year, called "Espresso".
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These limits might decrease traffic, but Napster still has more than 60 million users according to the most recent figures available. That huge user base attracts more content, which in turn continues attracting more users. "It's in the record companies best interest to work things out with Napster," said Rhoda. "They have a user base that's already established."
But at the same time, users who decide not to wait for Napster to become a full-fledged commercial music provider--or who are unwilling to pay for that music--already have two basic categories of Napster-like alternatives: decentralized software and centralized services.
Decentralized P2P software allows users to view the file directories of other current users. Perhaps the best-known decentralized P2P software is the open source, Gnutella. Aimster, which piggybacks on Instant Messaging clients such as AOL's, is another example.
Decentralized technologies are particularly bothersome for copyright holders in that there is no one to sue except the actual users/infringers themselves. Decentralized P2P software systems also have some key drawbacks that likely will limit their use.
First and foremost, decentralized P2P can't currently support the scale of the centralized services. "Sixty million users of Gnutella right now would bring the Internet to its knees," Webnoize's Rhoda says.
Napster is a centralized type of P2P-it maintains a central server that tracks who's got what. Users all can access and download music from the central server. While there are other centralized services, which could also scale, like Angry Coffee or Scour Exchange--which now is owned by CenterSpan Communications--they too are open to the same court action that Napster faces, so they would face many of the same restrictions placed on Napster. Both Angry Coffee and Scour voluntarily shut down their own P2P sections in recent months (Scour went into Chapter 11 after being sued by the movie and record industries) until deals could be struck with copyright holders.
Given the legal and technical realities, it seems unlikely Napster will lose its huge user advantage to free copycats. But as a legitimate pay subscription service, Napster will face different competitive threats that could prove far more damaging.
Once the rules are established for the Napster case, they essentially will have been established for everyone and a range of companies can jump into the commercial P2P music arena.
Hillary Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, has pointed out that Napster is "not the only game in town" and that record companies easily could back other services with their license agreements. Indeed, such larger players as AOL Time Warner may try to buy into smaller P2P companies, cut deals for legitimate content, and ultimately compete directly with Napster.
"Companies like AOL are going to do much better with a subscription music service, although obviously they have some serious issues to work out internally as a mega-corporation with varied needs and restrictions," says Adam Powell, CEO and co-founder of Angry Coffee. "When they get their politics straight they can gobble up any number of companies with 'legal Napsters' such as the one Angry Coffee is building."
These "legal Napsters" also will come to include more than just music content, particularly as broadband connectivity allows for larger files to be shared. Year-old iMesh is another centralized service that spans both music and video.
CenterSpan, an Intel portfolio company, plans to relaunch the Scour Exchange service legally this year with encryption technology and content licensing agreements. The service eventually will span a broad range of music, games and movies.
Hercules eventually killed the Hydra; don't expect the same kind of fate for P2P content services.
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