Attempt to log into the infamous Napster music site and you will be required to download new software.
The new version of Napster has no technological improvements. The sole purpose of the upgrade is to monitor your choices in music and tell you that it is illegal to download.
To be sure, Napster has implemented an mp3 detection system that would allow only “legal” copies to get through the system. Napster acknowledges that, “choices will be limited” as they get the new system up and running.
The evolution of technology is the evolution of the worst kind. Things that do not perform get stamped out of history. Napster will be only a faded memory in short time. The record companies killed Napster in a vain and arrogant attempt to strike fear into programmers that could really care less.
Something far more “dangerous” is eager and ready to replace Napster. It is loosely called Gnutella.
Gnutella has no central point–literally no central point. For people who cannot understand, it is repeated here: NO CENTRAL POINT.
Gnutella has no governing organization. Nobody to serve any lawsuits.
Gnutella (like… Satan, maybe?) comes in dozens of forms. Anybody with anything resembling programming skill combined with some time can write a client that will access the Gnutella nebula.
Gnutella cannot be stopped short of declaring all Gnutella applications to be illegal. Maybe even declaring Gnutella applications to be “piracy paraphernalia.”
The legal implications of this just don’t carry any weight today.
That won’t happen in the United States. Not for Gnutella. Not this year.
The Recording Industry Association of America still hasn’t grasped the idea that Gnutella won’t and can’t go down like Napster. They display their emboldened stupidity in the June issue of Rolling Stone:
“They tried to say that about Napster [no central point]. The Court agreed with our position on Napster. I think they’ll agree with our position on Gnutella.”
No sympathy goes to stupid people.
Maybe the Court will agree but exactly who will they rule against? Who will be served the subpoena to hold responsibility for the creation and propagation of Gnutella?
America Online? Their programmers created Gnutella. But AOL isn’t AOL anymore. It’s AOL-Time-Warner. They have huge interests in the music business. Do they cut off their nose to spite their face?
Maybe the programmers? They obviously are evil. We should burn them like warlocks and witches for possessing knowledge that mere mortals do not have. They are clearly servants of Satan.
Something says that such action would be an uninhibited bad idea.
The recording industry needs to get a clue. Gnutella is here to stay because it is “viral” software–it has a life of its own and requires no humans to function. That’s not a Cyberista sci-fi creation from our ass. Software as lifeform was first proposed by Oxford physicist, Stephen Hawkings.
During most of the Napster lawsuit, Gnutella was not a friendly or even functional program. In June 2001, Gnutella is ready to seamlessly fill the void left by Napster through applications like Lime Wire and others.
The only organization/program with antibodies to Gnutella was Napster. The Record Industry seems to be assembling this concept in their collective pea brain but it’s too little, too late. Evolution continues.
