Viable entities wait to fill the void of free music on the Internet.
Outside of a brief spell in July 2000 when an injunction was issued against Napster , the vast array of potential proxies have lurked in the hulking shadow of the music file sharing behemoth. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has yet to render its long-awaited decision on that injunction, but Napster's tactics since then belie any dependence on the court ruling in its favor. And I'm not convinced that music will be as easy to sell as pornography, simply because it's already widely available, and there are already some alternatives to Napster. Clarke released version 0.3.7 of Freenet this week, and hopes to unveil version 0.4 next month with significant improvements in efficiency, security, and ease of use. Two weeks ago, Florida-based Free Peers released BearShare, a version of Gnutella that is vastly easier to use than its predecessors.