Shutting down an idea? Impossible.

As you've all heard by now, a Federal judge has ordered Napster shut down. So I run to Scott Rosenberg at Salon, for the analysis. He has it pegged right, as usual. Or at least, I think he has. His prognosis is quite hopeful, actually... perhaps a tad hopeful, but then again so am I.

Rosenberg's main contention is that shutting down the Napster phenomenon as opposed to Napster the company is both ill-conceived, and impossible. The MP3 genie has been let out of the bottle, and cannot be put back in. I'd extend this a bit further, and say that MP3s are now an Internet meme. MP3s are now hardwired into the 'genome' of the Internet; removing them is tantamount to going back in time and rewriting history. Basically, impossible.

But to cut to the chase. Here are links to Napster alternatives -- the Internet ecosystem, particularly the open-source tundra, continues to come through for netizens everywhere:

Gnutella (as of 3 pm today, it had an interesting error message!)
Freenet "Re-wiring the Internet"
Napigator "Your Navigator To Nap Servers And Internet Audio"
Opennap Open Source Napster Server
CuteMX search software for DLing any type of files
Scour "Your Digital Information Universe"
iMesh file-sharning website (various media) and application

Jun Aug

{ net.casting }
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