A judge recently ordered Napster to shutdown. Well, it almost happened. Take a look at the future of music sharing
Napster was recently ordered to shutdown and the order was taken back. We all know Napsters weakness is that it connects users over a central server system which can be shutdown, which almost happened. Gnutella and others don't have central servers, but rather the software communicates to other users using users, unique, IP addresses instead of servers. Still, their is a weakness. The problem is that like Napster, about 99% of the music shared is copyrighted music. Gnutella doesn't do the stealing, but rather, it creates a system that allows people to steal. Gnutella is like the driver that takes people to an arena that it created; all for the purpose of sharing music. When nearly everyone uses the software for copyright violations, it seems that eventually, a judge may order that all Gnutella or Gnutella clone software is illegal to own or distribute and order to shutdown program download sites. This won't stop the revolution, but will make it difficult for the less knowledgeable to find programs. The counter-argument is that maybe 1% of the people use these programs for legitimate, legal music and file sharing. These people may claim that they have the right to share music and programs. However, when weighing the total impact, I can envision a judge ruling that these programs harm musicians, the music recording industry and impact the economies for this market in a negative way. This goes in addition to the fact that the recording industry has money for lawyers. So, enjoy it now, because in the future, besides breaking copyright laws for the music, you may also be breaking the law by having the program on your computer.
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