File sharing after Napster

By Вen Li

When we first looked at Internet music-swapping technologies a year ago, things were quite different. Napster had been slaughtered by the courts, Gnutella was immature, and the tech bubble funding the dozens of file-sharing networks hadn’t quite yet burst. Since then, music swapping, driven mostly by the 18–24 demographic, continued to grow and adapt around continued legal threats from the recording and motion picture industries, and expanded to include sharing of all file types, not just music.

Napster was imported because it pioneered the peer-to-peer publication model where users were both the suppliers and consumers of content. By eliminating the corporate publisher as a barrier to publication, Napster theoretically allowed content to flow freely between users. That was not to be as Napster’s servers which told the peers how to contact other peers were shut down by the courts.

Napster’s fall forced millions of existing users onto smaller alternative networks, mainly Gnutella. Gnutella, designed to have no single point of failure unlike Napster, has scaled up to accommodate more users although it’s still slow at times, while FastTrack, a commercial peer-to-peer network operating under the KaZaA, Morpheus, and Grokster banners continues to grow despite legal threats from the recording industry and court-imposed shutdowns.

Consolidating file sharing to the two networks allows users to search and access more content but it also results in slower downloads and congestion. To combat this, developers have since added features which allow users to download individual files from multiple sources if they are duplicated on the network. Other features include more advanced file viewers and improved file download queues.

With these points in mind, let’s examine some new file-sharing options.



WinMX 2.6

WinMX is by far the best file sharing client we tested both in terms of number of hits returned and well-rounded functionality, beating iMesh reviewed last year. Features such as bandwidth throttling, multiple simultaneous searches, transfer queuing and the ability to resume interrupted transfers more than compensate for the functional but clunky interface and limited search options.

In addition, WinMX inherits features specifically geared towards sharing audio files from its days as a Napster clone, and was the only client we tested that did not contain spyware, software that reports your Internet activities to advertisers, by default. Unfortunately, WinMX does not have an integrated file player and is only available for Windows.



Morpheus 1.3.3

Morpheus is one of three clients including KaZaA and Grokster that make use of the proprietary FastTrack file sharing network and is the only one of the three that doesn’t contain spyware. With the exception of logos, all three programs are identical and all use the integrated Brilliant Digital Entertainment file player.

While the number of hits returned was not spectacular, they are presented in a visually and functionally appealing manner appropriate to the number of available search options. The filtering options also help to reduce the number of false hits.



FileNavigator 3.02

FileNavigator for Windows is just one of many clients for the Gnutella network and perhaps the best choice for users new to peer-to-peer file sharing. The basic and intuitive interface reflects the program’s simplicity in terms of usability and features, but leaves much of the Gnutella network’s functionality and options unavailable. The inclusion of a basic file player would make FileNavigator a more well-rounded program.

Other Windows Gnutella clients and clients for other platforms are available at www.gnutella.com.