On Monday morning, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco made it official: Lars Ulrich has something to smile about. According to the 58-page opinion issued by the court, the MP3 file-swapping service Napster "knowingly encourages and assists its users to infringe the record companies' copyrights."
For Napster, that decision is bad news. It means that the Redwood City-based company must now comply with a retooled version of the injunction ordered last July by U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel.
That earlier ruling barred Napster from allowing its service to facilitate the trading of copyrighted materials — something that, by all accounts, is far easier said than done. Napster representatives have already gone on record to state that such a requirement would be likely to "greatly curtail or even eliminate the service."
Dark times for Napster, indeed. Nevertheless, there are alternatives. For die-hard Napster users, the trading will go on — the eventual fate of Napster Inc. notwithstanding.
Because the Napster protocol is a peer-to-peer file sharing technology, MP3s offered on the network aren't served from any central machine. Instead, you retrieve the files directly from the individual hard drives of other Napster users. Even if Napster the company gets shut down, there will still be millions of Napster users ready and willing to trade MP3 files with one another.
Of course, willingness alone isn't enough. What the central Napster servers do provide is a directory of users connected to the service, and listings of the files each is offering for download. Without this crucial element, not only would Napster users be unable to search for MP3s, they wouldn't even know where to find one another. Thus, if the Napster servers disappear, in effect so does the Napster network.
It was precisely this vulnerability that led to the development of the alternative P2P technology, Gnutella. In Gnutella's model, there are no central directory servers; cataloguing and searching for files is purely a cooperative process. But the problem with Gnutella is that it scales badly. The more users join the network, the more its performance degrades.
Because of this, most P2P users seem to agree — if grudgingly — that the Napster model is the way to go. But faced with the very real possibility that the company's servers might be mere weeks away from being shut down for good, what's a loyal Napster user to do?
Enter OpenNap, an Open Source software project dedicated to the preservation and advancement of the Napster protocol.
The OpenNap software runs under Windows, a number of Unix variants, and even OS/2. Once installed, it stores the network addresses of users who connect to it using the Napster protocols, and maintains a searchable catalog of their files. In other words, it operates identically to a Napster directory server.
One OpenNap server is all you need to create a fully functioning miniature of the official Napster network. But you also have the option to link your OpenNap server to other servers hosted elsewhere on the Internet. When linked in this fashion, OpenNap servers form cooperative communities not unlike Gnutella, only without the network overhead that protocol implies.
The OpenNap developers have added still further features to their server software, as well. While Napster was initially conceived solely as a means of trading MP3s, OpenNap expands the protocol's capabilities to encompass any type of file, including movies, software or even ordinary text.
Because of these added capabilities, many Napster users aren't waiting around for the demise of the original to embrace the Open Source alternative. A directory of Napster protocol servers at napigator.com already lists hundreds of machines operating directory servers, completely independent of the official Napster network.
To date, however, the bulk of Napster traffic still moves across the official servers. And for some OpenNap users, that's just the way they like it.
"We hate all the teenyboppers on Napster," explains one OpenNap user, identified by the screen name D1OX1N. "Hate! Hate! Hate!"
D1OX1N's preferred music trading environment is DeathNap, a small OpenNap network spanning a handful of directory servers. "DeathNap is an OpenNap network dedicated to metal and hard rock music," he explains. "You'll find a lot more metal on here than on other networks."
D1OX1N's militant anti-teenybopper stance aside, the atmosphere of the DeathNap chat channels is welcoming, friendly, and lighthearted — doubtless largely attributable to the fact that DeathNap's users are united by a common musical interest. There's something here for any heavy metal fan, with tracks by artists ranging from AC/DC to Cradle of Filth. Nobody connects to DeathNap looking for songs by the Backstreet Boys.
But while networks like DeathNap and PhishNap aim for a smaller, community-oriented feel, still other OpenNap networks more closely mirror the general-purpose intent of the original Napster service. Whether a general-purpose OpenNap network will truly be able to pick up the slack in the event of the official Napster network's demise, however, remains to be seen.
Because OpenNap uses the Napster protocol, its networks remain just as vulnerable as Napster itself. To date, no OpenNap server has been threatened with prosecution by the Recording Industry Association of America or other intellectual property organizations. But unlike the Gnutella network, in which there are no easy targets, an OpenNap network does present a public face.
Operators of OpenNap directory servers could potentially find themselves held liable for the contents of their entire network, should a final judgment in the Napster case set that precedent. And the more popular a given network, the more likely it is to draw attention.
On the other hand, the irony of this most recent court decision is that it may actually remove what could have proved to be one of OpenNap's biggest obstacles: Napster itself.
Let's face it; Napster as a free service has been doomed for months. If the company has any hope for survival, then that hope lies in its plan for an upcoming subscription-based service, the brainchild of its partnership with European media giant Bertelsmann AG. With such a service, Napster hopes to legitimize itself in the eyes of the recording industry, by proving its ability to provide a revenue stream for the artists whose songs are shared on its network.
In order to deliver on that promise, Napster desperately needs to dispel the perception of its users as an unruly mob of thieves and anarchists. Instead, it must paint a picture of an orderly, well-managed content delivery network, whose users operate in compliance with the law, and which is fully under the control of Napster Inc.
In other words, Napster needs to look like everything OpenNap is not.
To achieve this aim, Napster's best bet would be to close its protocols and "proprietize" its network. Only then would it be able to claim it has control over who uses its service and what they use it for. To that end, chances are that a new, subscription-based Napster service would only be accessible using "official" client software developed by Napster Inc. itself (rather than one of the myriad clones).
Further, it seems likely that any next-generation client software would be designed such that it can't access OpenNap servers. A truly born-again Napster Inc. could hardly be seen as condoning file-trading activities that take place outside its industry-endorsed purview.
So even if Napster does find a way to survive its current tribulations, the development of a rift within the Napster user community seems inevitable. And as the rift widens, file-sharing aficionados will be faced with a tough choice.
Because after all, while a reformed Napster service like the one I describe would probably still offer more files than anyone else, and while the company might gain the blessing of the recording industry, it just wouldn't be the same.
Napster would still have the name. But OpenNap is the one preserving the spirit.
