As Napster's future looks increasingly bleak, other file sharing services will have the opportunity to expand their memberships -- but so far most of these services have yet to catch on within the Dartmouth community.
The vast majority of students who spoke with The Dartmouth expressed little familiarity with Napster's competitors. Only a third could name a service other than Napster.
"I know there's something called Scour, but I'm not sure it even exists anymore," Sonia Tarantolo '04 commented.
This dearth of knowledge regarding alternative programs isn't for lack of options. A search in Yahoo's "peer-to-peer file sharing" category yields over 50 listings, including Gnutella, Freenet, CuteMX, iMesh and Scour.
However, to the less technology-savy student, these sites are a bit more intimidating. A visit to one of Gnutella's hub sites, for example, directs potential users to lengthy self-descriptions, tutorials and firewall explanations.
Only one of the students interviewed is currently using an Internet file-sharing service other than Napster.
"[iMesh] isn't as good. It's not as user-friendly, and there isn't as large a base of files because there are fewer users," Dan Hastings '04 said in comparing the service to Napster.
Hastings added that the reason he uses iMesh in addition to Napster is that it allows him to download files other than just MP3s.
Most students also expressed ambivalence as to whether they would look into alternative services after Napster establishes a paid subscription-based service or is taken offline. Some stated that they would likely just rely on files previously downloaded, or go back to buying CDs.
"I've already built up a library online, so it's not that big of a deal for me," Tom Daniels '04 said, adding that he would probably consider another service if he discovered a new band with a large number of songs he wanted.
The primary advantage that many of these services do hold over Napster is that while the latter offers only MP3 music files, services such as iMesh and Gnutella allow users to obtain a number of files, including movie trailers, music videos, images, animation and text.
Although Napster's legal difficulties have been the most highly publicized, it has not been the only service to meet with lawsuits.
Perhaps the most known of Napter's rivals, Scour Inc., shut down its full services last November as part of a copyright infringement suit. The company has since been bought out by the CenterSpan Communications, which intends to relaunch a legal version of the site in the coming months.
According to Scour's website, whether or not this new service will include membership fees has not yet been determined.
Some groups may have discovered a way to protect themselves from such liability by using decentralized search systems. The assumption here is that without a controlling company or website, the group will be immune to subpoenas.
For example, the Gnutella group uses a number of hub sites to allow users to "surf the links" between the files of other users.
While Gnutella might have for the moment avoided the sort of legal actions taken against Scour and Napster, it is currently facing lawsuits of a different variety. In recent weeks, several Gnutella hub sites have been forced to change their domain names as courts abroad have ruled in favor of Ferrero -- the company which manufactures the hazelnut spread Nutella.
Representatives of Ferrero told The Standard Europe that they feared the use of Gnutella domain names would link their product with a "virtual conglomerate of copyright pirates and friends of child pornography."
