He doesn't think that many of the open-source solutions are quite ready for prime time use. In another year or so, they will be ready for wide use. Now the code is still flaky and the interfaces are very clunky. He said that his site had a definite traffic surge Thursday, and he believes people are looking for alternatives to Napster. That makes him happy, because he thinks Napster's ethics are debatable.
Percolator is really a big subversive prank.
We do know we're definitely promoting our political agenda to break down the old system of record label companies, but we'd also like to break down Napster too while we're at it. There's got to be a way to take care of the artists and their fans. Powell said his company will continue to focus on ways to get artists paid for their music while providing people with easy ways to download the music that they want. Elliot Prado, a computer programmer and musician, agrees with Powell that Napster didn't care about the programs' users or the musicians whose songs they made available. I think they wanted to set up a system where they would track what people were downloading and sell that information to the record companies.