Free mp3 software

Here's something I find terrifically ironic. Time-Warner is one of the most outspoken companies in the entertainment industry against music piracy made possible via software like Napster, among others.

Now check this out:

Through a series of bigger fish swallowing smaller ones, Time-Warner owns America Online, which in turn owns Nullsoft, the developer of the popular MP3 player WinAmp.

In March, Nullsoft spun off Gnullsoft, which created a Napster-like utility, called Gnutella, for MP3 sharing. And, while Napster gets most of the headlines these days, comparing Gnutella to Napster is like comparing a Ferrari to a tricycle -- in theory at least.

So Time-Warner, anti-MP3-pirateer, is also the proud owner of the best music piracy tool on the market and it's free to anyone who wants it.

As was inevitable, this news somehow found its way up through the management ranks and AOL shut down Gnullsoft.

But it was too late.

You see, Gnutella was provided as an open source offering, so development lives on around the globe.

In less than two months, there are now about a dozen versions of the product available on the Net and it is almost certain that some of the original developers are secretly contributing to these ongoing efforts.

Gnutella's user interface isn't very pretty (yet), but it has some very distinct advantages over Napster.

It's fairly common knowledge that Napster is being sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and a few dinosaur rock bands like Metallica (do they really have any fans left?)

If any of these legal maneuvers succeed, Napster could be shut down, since it is centralized. No server, no service.

Gnutella, on the other hand, is not centralized. Every client is a server and vice versa. There is no entity responsible for Gnutella, so there is no company to sue.

The RIAA and all the hungry lawyers out there would have to sue everyone who owns a PC and a copy of the software. Good luck!

Another plus of this "client-as-server" approach that Gnutella was designed to survive nuclear war. Even a major portal like Yahoo! can and has been brought to its knees by hackers. That's not possible with Gnutella, because there are no portals to attack.

But before you ask what music piracy has to do with an IT manager's day-to-day existence, Gnutella has no limits on file types.

MP3s may be fun for kids to swap, but users can choose to share anything from a recipe for apple pie to a PowerPoint presentation of a business plan.

System administrators also need to know that you can use Gnutella to reach people (and files) outside your firewall or, alternatively, you could set up your own GnutellaNet within your firewall as a self-enclosed peer-to-peer network.

Gnutella, like many technologies, has the potential to spawn great new file exchange opportunities in the corporate world, or to enable the criminal element to run rampant.

Whichever camp you're in, you should be aware of all that Gnutella has to offer.

There are many places to grab a copy of Gnutella. I recommend www.gnutella.wego.com. It has links to many third-party clones of the software that will run on just about any platform.

You may find the site a bit busy, though. It went from zero to one million unique visitors in 45 days (mid-March to May!)

It is perhaps fortuitous that Napster is under fire and getting all the media attention.

By the time the dust settles and Napster is either shut down or vindicated, everyone will own a copy of Gnutella and will be able to share anything they want over the Internet, with anyone they want, without even requiring a browser.

As the overview of Wego.com's intro to Gnutella concludes, "The important thing is that Gnutella will be here tomorrow. It's reliable, it's sharing terabytes of data, and it is absolutely unstoppable."

Charles Whaley is a Toronto-based IT consultant and market analyst. He can be reached at cwhaley@ITEnterprises.com or at www.ITEnterprises.com.

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