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David Wilson

Rebel software engineer Justin Frankel was always fiddling with some program or other during his Arizona childhood.

He developed his first successful product in 1997 after dropping out of the University of Utah. The free online music player, Winamp, was nifty but it never really caught on.

Mr Frankel's big break came in 2000 at the age of 21 when he devised Gnutella, a devilish little software tool that allows its users to bypass the dominant Internet companies and communicate directly among themselves.

His bosses at America Online (AOL) were so thrilled they immediately tried to strangle it.

Within 24 hours, AOL officials had pulled the tool from the Web site of its Nullsoft development house. Gnutella was, they pronounced in a phrase that would do credit to any totalitarian regime, an 'unauthorised freelance project'.

AOL may as well have said: 'Just take it.'

After all, by the time the statement was issued, about 10,000 people had already downloaded the program onto their computers, spawning networks for the free exchange of everything from digital music files and pictures to political propaganda beyond the control of AOL or its merger partner Time Warner.

Gnutella - named after the free software licence 'Gnu' and Mr Frankel's favourite chocolate spread 'Nutella' - subsequently spread like the substance it was named after.

It especially proved a headache for the record industry because, unlike with the original file-swapping behemoth Napster, users of Gnutella can trade files without going through a storage centre. This makes it impossible to shut down without unplugging every computer on the network and hard to litigate against because of the lack of a central authority.

The end nearly came when Mr Frankel found the strength to abandon his non-profit principles and sell Gnutella to AOL in 1999 for nearly US$100 million.

AOL shut down the project, but to no avail because the beta code had already been released on the Internet, keeping the system alive.

But Gnutella's future still looks endangered for two reasons: cookies and cops.

Gnutella nuts are reportedly sharing more than they bargained for, including sensitive data files that could expose them to identity theft. A recent search of Gnutella conducted by the online privacy watchdog the Privacy Foundation (www.privacyfoundation.org) uncovered scores of files that could compromise the service's users. The foundation blamed cookies, the electronic markers automatically left on users' computers by Web sites they visit.

Normally, these files are private. Under certain settings in Gnutella, however, users can open their hard drives indiscriminately to the network, giving anyone who cares to look access to their recent Net history. This could ultimately result in the gleaning of passwords and usernames that could in turn give access to bank accounts, for example.

Soon journalists will be digging up victim stories headlined: 'Gnutella unleashed a shark on my hard drive' and 'Gnutella wrecked my life'.

That said, who except those with too much time on their hands will listen? It takes some doing to believe that a system named after a brand of chocolate goo poses a serious threat.

The legal danger, which applies to all file-sharing systems, at first sight looks marginally more credible. It became apparent in the wake of a Washington court's January ruling that gave entertainment companies the right to get the names, addresses and phone numbers of users if evidence arises they are using the Net to obtain or pass on copyrighted works.

Should the ruling go global, this could in theory mean you need to watch out lest the Internet police arrest you or your child for downloading pop songs.

But relax. The Internet is so sprawling that it will surely never be effectively policed for illicit sharing of files any more than the authorities last century could stop the taping of records. Today, Gnutella is the basis for most person-to-person networking on the planet and could live happily ever after.

Devotees portray it as the revival of the romantic dream espoused by many a cyberspace pioneer of a truly free space where no information gatekeeper exists and all property is shared.

Confused by computer jargon? E-mail technopedia@scmp.com with your questions



Neither cookies nor cops can threaten Gnutella