02/15/2001

By Doug Bedell / The Dallas Morning News

AUSTIN -- With his baggy jeans and stringy, disheveled hair, 24-year-old Ian Clarke looks every bit the nerdy computer science student -- hardly a menacing figure to be feared by artists and entertainment corporations alike.

But within minutes of his SXSW Interactive Festival keynote conversation this week with DJ Spooky, Mr. Clarke's rap clearly has the audience of music industry professionals, Web developers and musicians feeling queasy.

The vision of his evolving Freenet Project -- a peer-to-peer mechanism that makes any information free and available anonymously on the Internet -- sends one creative-type into a rambling lecture on the value of intellectual property in a world where copyrights mean nothing. "How will I be paid?" the young musician asks.

And with characteristic self-assurance, Mr. Clarke delivers his answer: "If you get clever about it, there are models that can work." In the post-Napster world of real peer-to-peer computing, Mr. Clarke explains, consumers will be able to invest in your future -- if it has merit. "Everybody," he says, "becomes a record producer."

These are hardly soothing words for the musician worried about a paycheck. But the future of peer-to-peer (or P2P) is paved with conjecture, not hard business models.

As record companies this week continued pressuring Napster to take down copyrighted music from its worldwide free distribution network, experts like Mr. Clarke gathered in SXSW panel discussions and hallways to exchange visions of newer, more cunning P2P models designed to thwart regulation by more than just the Record Industry Association of America.

OpenCola.com, Gnutella.com, Aimster.com and dozens of other companies and ad hoc groups are trying to finish what Napster's P2P network started. Both advocates and opponents of more pervasive P2P networks -- Internet hookups that allow direct exchanges of anything stored on computer hard drives -- seem to agree the technology holds great promise and peril.

Intel, IBM and other large players have begun pushing for standards that would allow interaction between the various P2P models being rolled out across the world. Meanwhile, the recording industry is still trying to digitally limit unfettered copying of its products. And film moguls are scrambling to avoid Napster-like legal battles in advance of the widespread use of broadband Internet connections that make it easier to swap extremely large digital movie files.

"I think studios are moving faster than their counterparts in music," said Andrew Frank, technology officer for Viant, which advises companies on creating new businesses based on Internet delivery. "You can't stem the tide with legal action alone," Mr. Frank said in advance of his appearance at the SXSW panel, "Post-Napster: The Future of Entertainment Distribution." "You have to create a better product that people would be willing to pay for."

Each segment of the emerging P2P development world brings its own agenda. Some are being designed exclusively to share medical information between corporations. Others hope to link up hard drives and data inside specific industries

The strange new landscape is confusing, even to Napster co-founder Sean Parker. "I guess I'm a skeptic; I'm not necessarily seeing a whole lot of viable applications going on," Mr. Parker said. "People are building generalized platforms with no plans."

In the case of Mr. Clarke's Freenet (freenetproject.org), critics say, the structure is simply designed to spread anarchy and disrespect for intellectual property rights.

The Edinburgh native came up with Freenet concept for a college computer science project. Freenet, like Gnutella and other new P2P concepts, would have no central distribution point or server. And it wouldn't just help users copy MP3 files ripped from copyrighted CDs. Rather, it would allow Internet sharing of anything from books to political diatribes to software to movies.

The idea was to make it impossible to stop distribution of anything users want to share. Two key features would ensure that no one -- whether lawyers from the RIAA or agents of government -- could bring down the network. First, any effort to eradicate a particular file from the system would result, instead, in its propagation. Each time you request or store a computer file, encrypted copies would be dispersed to hard drives used along the delivery route. Second, identities and locations of all files would be scrambled so users cannot be pinpointed for prosecution or lawsuit. Users can't tell what files are stored on their hard drives by the network.

Mr. Clarke's treatise on the proposed architecture received "B" from his professor. But that didn't deter his quest to make it a reality. Sharing and collaboration were central components of the original design of the Internet, he is fond of pointing out.

Freenet simply builds on the Internet's original goals, he says.

In 1999, Mr. Clarke joined programmer Brandon Wiley in development of the first rudimentary versions of Freenet software. Along the way, Mr. Clarke gathered a vocal following whose members see Freenet as part of a larger social revolution. And Mr. Clarke became the poster boy for the post-Napster P2P movement.

"It's really about freedom of speech and freedom on the Internet," Mr. Clarke told the SXSW audience. "In history, in any circumstances where oppression or severe crimes against humanity have been perpetrated, there has been censorship. Anonymity is essential if information is to be uncensored."

That sort of talk, and the potential for widespread adoption of Freenet-like file-sharing programs, has struck fear into the hearts of those who profit from sales of copyrighted material. Their arguments are lost on Mr. Clarke, who says he believes that all intellectual property laws are based on faulty, out-moded logic.

"I don't think information is property," Mr. Clarke said. "Thus, I don't think people can buy it. and I don't think people can steal it. You don't have to deprive me of my MP3 files in order to possess a copy."

Thus far, no little men in black coats have visited his Edinburgh home with search warrants, he said in an interview. "I haven't had much contact with them," Mr. Clarke said with a laugh. "I think they realize that it's kind of futile. Freenet is essentially designed to thrive in an environment where people are trying to shut it down.

"I think they realize courts might work with Napster, but Freenet is quite a different kettle of fish."

Legal ambushes of Napster-like file exchange services are actually making them more popular, Mr. Clarke and other developers said. "What the RIAA did when they sued Napster is turn a very popular Web site into a phenomenon," said Mr. Clarke. "I somewhat doubt that they would be dumb enough to do that again."

As file-trading is shut down on Napster, alternative services like Freenet and Gnutella experienced giant surges in usage. Jumps in traffic have pointed out problems with some P2P structures. For example, as Napster's death appeared imminent two weeks ago, Gnutella's network ground to a halt. Freenet did not -- and cannot -- suffer a similar fate because of the way it is designed, Mr. Clarke said.

But there are broader problems facing this young Internet zone. For one thing, there is no mechanism for eliminating child pornography, stolen credit card information or bad information from such systems. Verifying and locating files on decentralized P2P prototypes also can be tough for users. Before you start a Freenet search, for example, you must know the title of the document you seek. Each document also has a numeric key that is cryptographically linked to the title. With just over 20,000 users now experimenting with the Freenet software, Mr. Clarke says, such obstacles will gradually be worked out.

Still, some observers believe indexing of resources is a necessity.

"These communities may not need central control and organization, but -- surprise, surprise! -- in addition to enabling software platforms and tools, they do need a way of defining an enforcing rules for themselves," Internet visionary Esther Dyson wrote recently in a column. "Peer-to-peer communities need a way to define and identify their members. They need a way to define their own rules and to exclude people who break them."

Said Corey Doctorow, founder of the Open COLA P2P concept: "As an artist, it's really hard to get people to notice I exist. The more stuff there is, the harder it is to get someone to actually notice your stuff."

OpenCola's model attempts get around this problem by employing a "relevance" ranking to searches for files on the Internet. As P2P membership grows, the amount of available information becomes richer, but harder to navigate. "It's like everybody showing up at your party with a six-pack of beer," Mr. Doctorow said. "Your party will grow as long as you have place for all that beer. After that, it's over."

If P2P is to fairly compensate artists and others creating valuable content for the network, new mechanisms for compensation must arise. Some services like MojoNation have attempted to create synthetic currency that can be exchanged for valued content. Others, like the Freenet-based Espra.net, are trying to develop voluntary payment methods to funnel money back to the artists whose works are being traded on P2P networks.

DJ Spooky said he is actually making more money now that Freenet and other file-sharing services are distributing his musical mixes. "In some ways, Japan and Europe are ahead of America with that," the entertainer said. "Over there, they'll pay $10,000 to $30,000 for someone like me to do one party, and there are parties happening around the clock."

Sampling and collaboration over the Internet using P2P file-sharing is important to spread concepts and ideas, he said. "It's not having the consumer taking the word of a corporation that, you know, 'This is culture,'" he said. "There's no one way."

As old music industry models crumble under pressure from P2P exchanges, Mr. Clarke said new services will start up to help musicians and other artists market and distribute their works without interference from corporate giants. Fairtunes.com and other voluntary payment plans for music will likely proliferate if the movement catches on, said Mr. Clarke.

"I think ultimately, this will be good for the artists," Mr. Clarke said. "It'll also be more pleasing philosophically because more people will be listening to your stuff before buying it.

"I think that's where it's all headed."