Napster was by far the most prominent of the unrestricted file-sharing services that has appeared on the Internet within the last two years. Its demise was initially seen as a major triumph for the record industry and advocates of copyright protection.
But Matt Bailey, the founder of Redshift Research, a research firm which focuses on Internet file sharing, said that while there were at least 1.57 million users logged on to file-sharing servers at any given time at the peak of Napster's success, that figure has risen to 2 million.
"It's possible that record executives have managed to slow growth, but what we're seeing now is more file sharing than ever," Bailey said.
The decision by the free file-sharing server Morpheus to join the Gnutella network last month might very well lead to another dramatic increase in file-sharing networks' usership. Use of the Gnutella network increased by almost 300 percent on the weekend that Morpheus joined the network. "The rise of Gnutella is a further sign that pirated music will never go away, said Bailey. "It may change, but it's not likely to disappear."
But one organization has responded to the threat of illegitimate file sharing in a proactive way. The Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group that represents the five major record labels, is in the process of enacting what it believes is a positive alternative to services like Gnutella.
Amanda Collins, a spokeswoman for RIAA, said the organization has developed a two-pronged strategy aimed at protecting the rights of artists and copyright owners -- educating individuals on copyright law and encouraging "legitimate" alternatives to services like Gnutella and Morpheus.
"The music industry is listening to what consumers want," Collins said. "The future is bright because these (subscription) services are still in version 1.0."
The sharing of pirated files seems especially unlikely to disappear on university campuses nationwide, Bailey said. Although many administrations have developed policies aimed at reducing student use of file-sharing services, their efforts have not produced any significant results. "The question here is whether the incentive (to prevent file-sharing) to universities is really worth the hassle to block access," he said.
Bailey said that universities have always had the ability to block student use of file-sharing services but have only taken action when network traffic was so large as to create a significant slowdown.
