Word: file
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...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...
Make no mistake: the implications of the peer-to-peer file-sharing movement that Napster pioneered go way beyond pop music. There are already Napster-like services for videos and full-length feature films. Books, blueprints, vintage comics and stock photos may be next in line. Even newspapers and magazines are worried. (Hey, you did pay for this article, didn't you?) The fact is--as the stitching-pattern makers learned the hard way--there's no corner of the so-called content industry, no bit of intellectual property, no idea, that isn't in danger of being Napsterized...
...loom in a war that will stretch from courtrooms to boardrooms and back. On a practical level, the conflict is being fought, as Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig has observed, between two sets of "codes." There's the legal code, or set of laws, that could end up endorsing file sharing or driving it into the criminal underworld, and there's the software writer's code, or computer instructions, that can create programs for sharing copyrighted information or encrypt files so they can never be shared...
There is no underestimating the threat that all this free file sharing poses to existing business models. There are as many as 1 billion music files available on Napster users' computers--a good chunk of the music backlist that record labels own and have traditionally profited handsomely from. Forrester Research last week unveiled a study predicting that within five years the music industry will lose $ 3.1 billion to piracy and the newfound independence of musicians. The music labels tried for a while to convince themselves that online piracy was a young person's sport, something that would be outgrown, like...
Perhaps. But peer-to-peer file sharing, it's now clear, is here to stay. Even if Napster is driven out of business, there are new, even more intractable sharing systems--notably Gnutella and Freenet--that allow files to be traded directly from PC to PC, without going through a single website like Napster's. These renegade services would be harder to shut down because they have no centralized plugs to pull, no company officers to sue. Former Public Enemy rapper Chuck D got it right: trying to stop file sharing over the Internet, he says, "is like trying...