Thanks to the Internet, information is now readily available at our fingertips. Some may say its too readily available. As a result of this we now have major software, music, and website copyright piracy. Other things that were stolen were domain names such as www.sex.com, credit card number theft, and websites designs and looks have been stolen.

Much of this such as music and software was originally stored in ftp sites which are very unreliable. Then, within about a week, the web hosting company would delete the information from the server to avoid lawsuits. So, someone looking for a mp3 song or particular software program might have to try 15 different ftp sites before getting one that worked.

Then, Napster came along not too long ago and changed this. Instead of going through a ftp site, users could keep the info on their own hard drives and share it with others around the world by using Napster. This greatly increased the chances of getting the info you were looking for and has now brought piracy to a new level.

Napster may be shut down, but their are other Napster like programs that will make it impossible to shut down. Gnutella is one and another is Scour. Gnutella users communicate with other users using IP addresses which every person on the Internet has. It relies on no central server, which is the weakness in Napster's system because it could be shut down. Also, Gnutella users are all linked together as one, whereas Napster has multiple servers, so the information available for download is less. Gnutella is just in its infancy, barely considered beta, when it was shut down by AOL, the parent of Nullsoft, Gnutella's maker. Now, programmers everywhere are enhancing Gnutella and Gnutella clones are developing.

To give you an example of how big Gnutella is, now, you could log onto Gnutella on a typical day and have 20 terabytes of information available for download!! And, this is just the beginning. It will be probably 100 times bigger in a few years when it becomes easier to use. Users can search for videos, software, music or virtually anything that the person has made available to share.

Scour has recently released a Napster like program as well. Scour was one of the pioneers in developing a website that listed reliable ftp sites that had MP3 music. Then Napster came along and blew them away, but now they are back!

Besides music, as Internet connection speeds increase, compression technology advances, and hard drive space grows exponentially, movies will become as readily available for download as MP3's. So, instead of going to the store or buying a DVD online, users will simply search for the movie they are looking for on a website or through a Gnutella like program and download it for free!

Bands such as Metallica and others are trying to stop piracy of their music. Well, they will quickly find out that it can't be done here in the US where we respect one another's privacy.

The only things that I can think of that will slow piracy will be if information providers such as software, music, and movie companies enhance the value of their products by offering services and making it better. It is not going to be slowed down by increasing penalties for copyright theft or by trying to encrypt DVDs. Smart software programers or others will quickly find their way around encryption and will develop software to copy DVD's.

By linking extra services or by making it worth more to consumers, consumers will start buying again.

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