AfterDawn: News

Nullsoft, a subsdiary of AOL-Time Warner and author behind WinAMP, is going to release a competing program for Napster, a tool that allows people to share and search MP3s around the Internet.

Unlike Napster, which model is to use centralized server that handles all the traffic, this new product dubbed as "Gnutella" makes small sharing communities insted of one huge network of users. This also will prevent blocking attempts against it - many U.S. universities have blocked access to Napster's servers from its students because of high traffic.



Nullsoft's product is planned to be released as open-source, but it still has bumps on its way -- AOL which recently bought Time Warner has its own interests in music business now and by publishing a product that would ease online music piracy, propably isn't in its main priorities...

Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 14 Mar 2000 16:25