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In fact, last time I checked, there was significantly more material available via Gnutella.

Napster had LOTS of servers (more then 50 I guess). The problem is that they didn't link these servers. One person that was in a server wouldn't find the people on other servers. It was not a real network. Think of it as lots of irc servers not linked.

Some GNU advocates may not like what I'll say now, but IMO, Gnutella sucks. The idea is fine. But the implementation has a looong way to go. At least the last time I checked, the only info you could get from a MP3 (for example) was the file size. You couldn't search for bitrate (I prefer 160+ kbps). You couldn't see the time also.

I tryed the windows client for scour and really liked it. Soon they'll release an open-source unix client. At the very moment I'm writing this message, there are 14.12 terabytes in the scour community (they love to call this way, don't they ? :) )and 3,827,414 files shared. This is much more than I've ever seen in a single Napster server. And the client is MUCH more well-implemented then Napster's.

Scour has a great 'scour exchange' program very very very similar to Napster.. 38000+ users makes for a decent base of music too.

Even found some nice obscure tunes I couldn't find on Napster or Gnutella!

Sites like www.scour.net allow you to search for mp3's and then store them on sites like idrive.com. The result is that the mp3's propogate themselves as more and more people make copies of these mp3's and store them on their idrive accounts. Now try to stop it.

Nothing makes me happier than to hear this. Each and every day one more clueless CEO jumps on the bandwagon against Napster. Little do they know that MP3 was here long before Napster and it will be here long after. If they want to squander their resources defeating a service which, techinically, is legal, while more and more just like it grow in size, then I'm all for sacrificing Napster to further the cause...

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Piracy has little to do with DeCSS. Even the MPAA cannot cite an example of it being used for this. This is a case about communicating ideas learned by examining copyrighted material. This does not present a "danger" - in fact, just the opposite, suppressing it is the far more dangerous path.

This is what kills me. With the whole VCD and DivX thing going on right now, and the fact that you can download a full length movie in MS's .ASF format from a website, FTP site, News Server or (theoretically) via DCC on IRC, this DeCSS thing would seem quaint if it weren't for its possible ramifications on our future.

Kinda like suing Napster... Really, what's the point? What about Scour or Gnutella, or Freenet, or the countless other FILE SHARING utilities that are popping up...

It's ludicrous to go after the people making the tools and utilities necessary to commit illegal acts of piracy. Noone sues gun companies for making guns that are used to kill, or for posting schematics that could be used to build them.

Code is free speech. Utilities can be shared. Just don't get caught using them.

Thanks, RIAA. I had been having troubles finding some music that I wanted on Scour.net, and was starting to get annoyed. Now I just downloaded Napster and found what I wanted in 2 seconds, downloaded them in 3, and am playing them right now. Thank you for pointing out to me the existence of this wonderful software (although I don't like the Linux client so much and I don't have the gnome development package so I can't compile either of the gnome ones)

BTW I own these songs on CD or cassette, but I can't play cassettes in my computer and CDs are just annoying (and I'm too lazy to rip them to mp3 myself :-)

"Software is like sex- the best is for free"
-Linus Torvalds

The subject of this posting could also be I downloaded the JRE for this?... but I digress:

I strongly agree with CoughDropAddict (can I call you CDA?) that this is pretty much useless.
I'll go a step further and tell you that it takes the words you enter and goes to two search engines (perhaps more, but two were all I identified), namely AltaVista and something called Scour.Net. I guess it then takes the titles of the documents it finds and swirls them about.

If you see one that interests you, tough! Because clicking on it will not necessarily bring up that phrase in the text box. If you click long enough, I guess it cycles through them. Eventually, you'll see the one you wanted. You hit and it goes out and does another search, this time using the page's title as keywords.

Wait a minute... what about the content of the page that I saw that had such an interesting title? What if I want to read it? I guess I'll have to go open a real browser to do that. I'll just copy'n'paste the URL of the page that I saw... no, wait. Netomat doesn't give you the URL either. OK, I'll just start over with a browser, by going to friggin' AltaVista my own self and doing a search. WAIT! That's what I already do!!!

Again, I installed the JRE for this?