Sharing Files with P2P Tools

New tools make a paradigm shift all but inevitable

The entertainment industry is more than a little worried about piracy

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been wielding lawsuits against Internet search engines since 1999, when it sued Lycos over that company's search engine, which the RIAA claimed was facilitating piracy.

Then, in Dec. 1999, Napster caught the attention of the RIAA, which subsequently threatened the Napster company with damages of up to $100,000 dollars for each song it claimed Napster was facilitating the illegal piracy of. This was, in the view of the Electronic Freedom Foundation and many other industry observers, clearly ridiculous. It's like saying that companies behind FTP programs or web browsers should be sued because their programs are used to download pirated software. Napster did not host illegal content, nor did it exclusively cater to illegal content, or in any way deter users from the enjoyment or exchange of legal MP3 content. In fact, the Napster website specifically advised users not to perform illegal acts. Heaven help the Internet economy if one of these lawsuits goes through and sets a precedent that makes the developers of FTP programs and Web browsers liable for the actions of their users. Already, many say the RIAA, and similar lobby groups in other counties (Canada, for example charges levies on recordable media to compensate artists for lost royalties) have irrevocably damaged the legitimate Internet music market, by demanding royalties on Internet webcasts and suppressing the sharing of independent music.

Indeed, the RIAA in April 2000 won a suit against MP3.com, as a judge agreed that the MP3.com service that allows users who own a CD to insert that audio CD into their own disc drive in order to enable the playback of the same music over the Internet has been found to be in violation of copyright laws. Details at:

• MP3.com In Violation Of Copyright Laws - Newsbytes
• MP3.com loses legal battle to RIAA - CNET News.com
• RIAA Wins Suit Against MP3.com - Wired News
• Court rules MP3.com 'liable': Music site's stock plunges more than 40 percent after federal judge rules it violated copyright law - Reuters

The Killer App

A study conducted prior to the demise of Napster's free file-sharing services in 2001 found that no less than 73 percent of students surveyed had downloaded MP3 audio files with the tool. Napster achieved critical mass largely due to the growing popularity of the MP3 (MPEG-Layer 3) audio format; the file-sharing program made it possible for virtually anybody with an Internet connection to find -- and, much to the chagrin of record companies, freely copy -- almost any piece of recorded music in existence. In more ways than one, it was a true "killer app" -- people were buying big hard drives and high-speed internet connections just to be able to set up their own PC-based music systems. Apple Computer based an entire advertising campaign on the slogan "Rip. Mix. Burn." Sales of CD burners skyrocketed.While such widespread use of a shareware or freeware tool to swap, copy or burn audio files isn't remarkable in itself, the fact that the vast majority of these audio files were probably taken without the express permission of the copyright holder quickly became a cause for concern to many in the music industry.

Thus, it wasn't long before the music-sharing website faced court injunctions, lawsuits and other legal pressure from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) -- steps which finally forced Napster out of business.

The first indication that the golden age of Napster was nearing its end happened in May 2000, when over 317,000 MP3 traders using Napster to trade MP3 files of the band Metallica found themselves banned from the system, as Napster buckled under pressure from the band's lawyers to stop piracy of Metallica's music. The Associated Press has details, while Salon.com notes an interesting twist in the story.

The ever-sassy Register (www.register.co.uk) subsequently published an article on how to edit the Windows registry to log back onto Napster if Metallica's lawyers managed to get you kicked off.

And, if you're wondering how Metallica's lawyers managed to track down those illegal users, you'll want to know about a tool called Media Enforcer. It allows you to type in a keyword, then runs constantly, checking all Napster servers for items that match your query.  It returns the username and IP address of the users sharing the matching songs. This list can then be exported a .csv (comma separated values) file that can be opened with Microsoft Excel and most other spreadsheets or databases.

Amazingly, these legal troubles -- or the fact that the company currently had no revenue model at all -- didn't stop Napster from acquiring millions of dollars in venture capital during this period of legal uncertainty. Indeed, in mid-Feb. 2001, Napster execs offered a billion dollars to record companies over the next five years in exchange for permission to violate their copyrights. (The record companies said "It's not enough.") Ironically, a year later, Napster the company was so ravaged by lawsuits that the entire shebang was sold to German giant Bertelsmann for a paltry $8 million, in a bankruptcy buyout.

Bertelsmann sees the company's potential to someday charge a fee for subscriptions, downloads and other services.

However, millions of users have since discovered alternatives to Napster that, because of their design, are virtually impossible to shut down. To understand why, we have to look at how Napster and roughly similar services such as AudioGalaxy (also effectively shut down by the RIAA in 2002, along with several other music-swapping services) worked.

If you used the audio/video search functions provided by Lycos or Altavista to cruise the Net for downloadable tunes, you are looking at an index stored on a bank of servers owned by the respective companies. If these servers were shut down, the ability to find the files would vanish. This is essentially how the RIAA shut down Napster, AudioGalaxy and several other file-exchange services designed around centralized servers.

One of the most popular of these early systems was called Scour. It was well-liked by novices primarily because of its straightforward interface. However, legal pressure (guess who!) forced the company to shut down its Scour Exchange file-swapping servers in 2001. The company found a buyer in Feb. 2001, when its assets were acquired by Centerspan Communications, so there is a chance that Scour may one day live again.

Around this time, there emerged a new file-sharing system designed as a true "peer to peer" protocol, in which no centralized servers are required. Thus, shutting down the servers is a lot more difficult -- the RIAA would essentially have to shut down each and every end user's computer which, by the way, they're trying to obtain the legal right to do.

Gnutella, an Open Source project created by Justin Frankel, the developer of the popular WinAmp MP3 player for Windows, got off to a rocky start when AOL, which had previously bought Frankel's Nullsoft company, found out about the "skunkworks" project. AOL, now merged with Time-Warner has a lot of intellectual property at risk, of course, and it seems that the prospect of a home-grown tool designed explicitly to freely trade music files didn't sit well with the "suits." However, by the time they put the kibosh on the project, the code was already circulating the Net and can now be downloaded from a wide array of sources, including www.fileflash.com and even CNet's usually respectable Download.com. See gnutellanews.com for more information about this program and its many clones, including at least one for the Macintosh platform.

Meanwhile, the RIAA, BSA, MPAA and other industry lobbyists are pursuing other file-swapping systems with a multi-pronged attack: threatening letters to ISPs, lawsuits and a "pollute the pool" strategy aimed at discouraging file swapping on Kazaa, Limewire and the many Gnutella file-sharing clients available by uploading bogus files. Indeed, it seems the majority of current movie files available on the Gnutella network are fake.

Copyright concerns are also leading to industry initiatives, under pressure from lobby groups, to build digital rights management (DRM) systems into entertainment systems and PC hardware components themselves. Sony, for example, in Aug. 2002 announced a new DRM technology called OpenMG X. It keeps track on how many times you played/viewed -- or tried to copy -- any product guarded by the system and sends these statistics to the copyright holder.

Also of interest: Even though the RIAA effectively shut Napster down, there are still several Napster-compatible Open Source servers and clients available from numerous parties. (See http://opennap.sourceforge.net/ for details.) A free program called Napigator allows you to specify the Nap server of your choice. Thus, Napster workalikes continue to operate "below the radar" of the RIAA's scrutiny, and, for better or worse, below a level at which they hold enough search results to reach the critical mass that Napster achieved in its heyday. Still, specialized servers for specific genres of music (Techno, Hip Hop, etc.) have their place in the cultural oeuvre. A good place to find out more about what's currently happening in the Napster world is www.nappyland.20m.com.

There are several notable Napster-related technologies still in use. One of the most innovative is "Wrapster", which essentially "wraps" any type of file with a header that makes it look to Napster like an MP3 file. Thus, Napster, which was originally designed to swap MP3s only, became a full-fledged Pandora's box, able to trade virtually any type of digital data: programs, movies, images, etc.

Other popular tools from gnutella.wego.com and www.edonkey2000.com handle a lot more than just MP3s. eDonkey is unique in that it allows interrupted downloads to continue - even from another source. Other popular Napster-like programs include CuteMX and iMesh (beware; we found version 2.0 of iMesh extremely buggy!); there are many more.

Today, however, the big action is happening on the Windows-only FastTrack (Kazaa, KazaaLite, Morpheus, etc.) or open-source Gnutella network. In addition to MP3 audio files, its users swap pictures, movies, software and just about anything else that anyone would like to share. Another difference is more subtle, but no less important: it is a Peer to Peer system, with no central servers, reducing the likelihood that users could be "banned," as happened on Napster in the months prior to its demise. However, there are risks inherent to this system, too -- the most obvious being analogous to the "tragedy of the commons" problem detailed in 1833 by William F. Lloyd. In this scenario, greed drives any limited resource (in this case, Internet bandwidth) toward ruin. Thus, by Aug. 2002, Gnutella developers began contemplating a closed or authorization-only system to prevent bandwidth hogging.

There's also work being done on a system its developers call Gnutella2. The only problem is: it has almost nothing to do with the original Gnutella, and is widely seen as a ploy to grab attention and establish credibility by exploiting the name.

What's Ahead?

BitTorrent, say some, may be the future of peer to peer file sharing. It is known as a “swarming, scatter and gather” file transfer protocol. Developed by Bram Cohen, it has been taking the net by storm, despite its current lack of a friendly, unified interface. Its proponents point to BT’s ability to scale in the face of overwhelming demand while minimizing the free rider problem (“leeching”) for the flood of new users.

Comments?

For Further Reading:

• See TheMP3Zone.com news page for more on this topic....
• AudioBuyersGuide.com: Audio search tools

From The MP3 Zone.com:

• Napster Plays On...for now - 11:47 AM, February 12, 2001
• Napster decision due Monday - 11:26 PM, February 9, 2001
• Napster membership charges coming - 2:18 PM, January 29, 2001

Over at Betanews.com, you'll find out why MP3.com Blocks Access to Major Label Content - For Now.

Meanwhile, Newsbytes reports on a  new MP3 Digital Watermark Technology from Cognicity.

Audio Q+A - How to develop your own Internet Radio content.

Move Over MIDI - MP3 is a hit.

If you liked Napster, you'll love "Gnutella".

Download Gnutella, Napster Clones Plus over 80 other Free Music File Sharing Programs from UltimateResourceSite.com

New York Times: Is it Theft or is it Freedom? - 7 Views on the Web's impact on Culture Clashes.

Slashdot: Gnutella is the future of the Internet