*** Democracies Online Newswire - http://www.e-democracy.org/do *** With all the talk about copyright infringement I have seen little press coverage on the fact that Napster is a technology that promotes electronic freedom of association. Online association, even if much of Napster's is short lived, is the most transformative political aspect of the Internet from my experience. Should technologies that promote freedom of association be banned because some people use them for illegal purposes? Perhaps Napster as a company is putting itself at risk because it focuses on music, but any constraint on the technology itself will be a giant blow, greater than the CDA on online freedoms. There is a good story in Time that gets at the social and political underpinnings for Napster: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/articles/0,3266,55730,00.html Highlights below. Steven Clift Democracies Online P.S. I think it might be time for a "Blue Dot" campaign for freedom of association online following the model of the "Blue Ribbon" for free speech. Think of it this way, if you have a web page and no one visits it - do you have a web page? Free speech only has real power within the context of free association. Here are some educational highlights from the Time article: TECHNOLOGY OCTOBER 2, 2000 VOL. 156 NO. 14 Meet the Napster Shawn Fanning was 18 when he wrote the code that changed the world. His fate, and ours, is now in the court's hands BY KARL TARO GREENFELD/REDWOOD CITY - clip - And he believed in it because his idea was so simple: a program that would allow computer users to swap music files with one another directly, without going through a centralized file server or middleman. He'd heard all the complaints about how frustrating it was to try to find good music on the Net, how so many of the pointers on websites offering current (which is to say copyrighted) music seem to lead only to dead ends. But Fanning figured out that if he combined a music-search function with a file-sharing system and, to facilitate communication, instant messaging, he could bypass the rats' nest of legal and technical problems that kept great music from busting out all over the World Wide Web. All he had to do was combine the features of existing programs: the instant-messaging system of Internet Relay Chat, the file-sharing functions of Microsoft Windows and the advanced searching and filtering capabilities of various search engines. He reasoned that if he could write a program that included all those features, he'd have a pretty cool piece of software. But there was a huge leap of faith involved. Nearly everyone he mentioned the idea to believed it wasn't workable. "It's a selfish world, and nobody wants to share," snorted his older, more experienced buddies from the IRC chat rooms. Fanning, an inarticulate teenager at the time, couldn't adequately explain himself. He insisted that people would do it, because, like... just because. What he was thinking was that this is the application that finally unleashes the potential of the Web, the viral growth possibilities of the community, the transgressive power of the Internet to leap over barriers and transform our assumptions about business, content and culture. He just couldn't spit out the words to convince his fellow programmers that his idea could change the world. Love it or hate it, that's what Napster has done: changed the world. It has forced record companies to rethink their business models and record-company lawyers and recording artists to defend their intellectual property. It has forced purveyors of "content," like Time Warner, parent company of TIME, to wonder what content will even be in the near future. Napster and Fanning have come to personify the bloody intersection where commerce, culture and the First Amendment are colliding. On behalf of five media companies, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has sued Napster, claiming the website and Fanning's program are facilitating the theft of intellectual property. Most likely the blueprint for the future of the entertainment industry will be drawn from this ruling. Legal issues aside, Fanning's program already ranks among the greatest Internet applications ever, up there with e-mail and instant messaging. In terms of users, the Napster site is the fastest growing in history, recently passing the 25 million mark in less than a year of operation. And, as Fanning predicted, his program does everything a Web application is supposed to do: it builds community, it breaks down barriers, it is viral, it is scalable, it disintermediates--and, oh, yeah, it may be illegal. - clip - In creating Napster, Fanning not only transformed the music business, but he also helped launch a new programming movement--and a whole wave of start-ups dedicated to what has become known as P2P, or peer-to-peer, client-based Internet software. Among Napster's revolutionary qualities is that it allows computer users to exchange files directly, avoiding server bottlenecks and, Fanning once hoped, legal problems. Only Napster's index and directory reside on a central server; the files are actually transferred via various Windows protocols directly from user to user. That means that no copyrighted material is ever in Napster's possession. There are myriad--and totally legal--possibilities for P2P applications, from swapping dense technical files through a local-area network (something scientists at the Centers for Disease Control are looking into) to replacing corporate servers with P2P systems for business applications. "The old days [i.e., the current Internet] were all about centralization and control, almost Soviet-style," says Miko Matsumura, CEO and co-founder of Kalepa Networks, a six-month-old start-up that plans to link P2P networks into a sort of alternative Internet. "In this new topology, everyone brings their own resources. The new network will be built on top of the old network. Like Rome was built in different layers." The new network, in other words, may not completely supplant the old, but it offers a new space for creating ideas and transferring them faster, more freely, more widely than ever before. Teams of designers, Web developers and business-school graduates are working up P2P programs and business plans and trotting them over to venture capitalists, who, in the wake of all the buzz about Napster, have been funding P2Ps the way they funded their alphabetical brethren B2Bs--business-to-business companies--last winter. - clip - A Peer-to-Peer Primer Napster and Gnutella let users swap data from one PC--or "peer"--to another, without going through a central server. Here's how they work: Napster 1 Napster is downloaded and installed on a personal computer. 2 The software enables the PC to log on to Napster's server. When a search is made, the server checks its database for any other Napster users who are online and have that file. 3 If the server finds a match, Napster puts the computer that has the file directly in touch with the computer that wants it, and the file is downloaded from one to the other. Gnutella 1 Gnutella is downloaded and installed on a personal computer. 2 A "hello" message is sent to a computer that's already on the network, which forwards it to seven others, letting them know that the first computer is onboard. They, in turn, forward it to six more, which forward it to five more and so on. 3 A request for a particular file percolates through the Gnutella network. When it reaches a computer that has the file, Gnutella connects the two computers directly, and the file is downloaded. Reported by Lev Grossman Napster Peers Pro --User friendly, even for relative Luddites --Popular, which means more chance you'll find the songs you're looking for --Napster is run as a business, so customer support matters Con --Its directory is stored on a central server. If the server is slow, so is the service --It works only for MP3s, not other files --Too successful for its own good. Banned at 40% of U.S. colleges Gnutella Peers Pro --Tough to ban because Gnutella files look like ordinary Web traffic --Truly decentralized; Gnutella doesn't rely on any central server --Works for all kinds of files; Gnutella isn't restricted to MP3s Con --You need another user to get onto the network --It's a grass-roots effort, which means no tech-support hot line --Gnutella is a work-in-progress, so there are still bugs in the code *** Please send submissions to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** To subscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** Message body: SUB DO-WIRE *** *** To unsubscribe instead, write: UNSUB DO-WIRE *** *** Please forward this post to others and encourage *** *** them to subscribe to the free DO-WIRE service. ***
