File-Swapping Aimster Offers Promise, Peril
Meet the music industry’s next legal nightmare: a Napster-like service that piggy-backs on America Online’s technology.
Aimster is a free software program that enables users of America Online’s popular Instant Messenger program to search for and trade files like the controversial music firm Napster Inc.
Born out of the minds of a team of college programmers and a 43-year-old e-publishing consultant, Aimster helps people exchange data files with their friends over AOL’s instant messenger service, known as AIM.
Such software is among the fastest-growing services on the Web, with more than 100 million registered users, many of whom spend hours a day chatting with online friends. AOL is the dominant player, with more than 65 million people scrambling to use the software and add pals to their personal AIM buddy lists.
This enormous group of Net-savvy users is why Aimster is both promising and terrifying to the music labels, say industry analysts. While Napster has spent a year pulling together more than 44 million users, Aimster is instantly tapping into a population that is bigger--and one that is growing faster.
“The best thing about Aimster is its community nature,” says Eric Scheirer, a Forrester Research analyst who follows file-sharing technologies. “The idea that friends can listen to music and chat about it at the same time is very compelling.”
Indeed, the software developed by the Aimster team, which is based in Albany, N.Y., works seamlessly on top of AIM. An updated version of Aimster is set to be released today. The new Aimster will incorporate a Web browser and allow people to search for files among not only AIM users but also users of other instant-messaging services by Microsoft Corp., ICQ and Yahoo Inc., said Aimster co-founder Johnny Deep.
In many ways, it’s easier to use than Napster. When Metallica fans want to listen to the band’s latest track, they can use Aimster to search through the hard drives of all their friends listed on their AIM buddy lists. And because Aimster lets people swap other types of data files--such as video or still photographs--they could seek out pop-music videos by the band, or concert shots of the lead singer.
“The thing that interested us was Aimster’s infrastructure: They’ve added a middle zone between something that is on my PC that no one can see, and the Napster approach of exposing my files to the world,” said Clay Shirky, a partner in investor firm Accelerator Group, who is working with Aimster as a business advisor.
This technological difference also means Aimster can create smaller, more hidden swap meets that are virtually untraceable, because the index of all these files is stored only on each AIM user’s personal machine.
Deep notes that this strategy offers both the company and its users several benefits. Subscribers feel more secure using Aimster because they are grabbing files off a friend’s machine, rather than a stranger’s. What they see is likely to be what they get--as opposed to unintentionally downloading a virus.
“I’ve talked to all the major labels directly, and each of them seems to be interested,” said Deep, who said his work in the publishing field has helped him make connections in the entertainment industry. “I can’t see how, or why, they’d want to sue us.”
Yet many industry experts say Aimster is the recording industry’s next legal target, and sources at both the Recording Industry Assn. of America and the Motion Picture Assn. of America say the groups are weighing their legal options.
Aimster also has been receiving calls from Intel Corp., Yahoo and--surprisingly--AOL, seeking either to cut a deal or to talk about a possible acquisition.
“It is a program that we’re aware of, and we continue to look into it,” said AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham. He declined to comment on any talks between AOL and the start-up company.
Acquiring the technology behind Aimster--which is not an incorporated company but rather a project being developed by a loose coalition of software developers--could be crucial for AOL, industry experts believe.
For one thing, it keeps AOL users connected to the AIM service longer than they normally would be, said Tim O’Reilly, chief executive of computer book publisher O’Reilly & Associates, who has been tracking the peer-to-peer arena.
“It also gives them an answer to Napster, and they’re going to need that with their Time Warner merger,” O’Reilly said. “If they own it, it may help them avoid some of the legal problems that Napster ran into.”
As outside interest in Aimster grows, the company has been quietly assembling a large legal team to prepare for trouble in court. Heading the team is Napster’s lead attorney, David Boies, sources say. Boies, who could not be reached for comment, prosecuted Microsoft inthe federal antitrust case and acted as Vice President Al Gore’s attorney during the post-election controversy.
Aimster may be preparing for a legal battle, but Deep insists the music labels could have a harder time in court.
The reason is simple: Unlike Napster, which enables mass distribution of music files to millions of virtual strangers, Aimster’s service limits a user’s file-swapping to the “friends” listed on the IM buddy group. For AIM users, that means one person can be connected to only 160 people at one time, which could mean that Aimster falls under the protection of federal law, which lets people share music with their friends for personal use.
There’s also the problem of the newly merged AOL and Time Warner, said Forrester’s Scheirer.
“AOL is the newest member of the RIAA. If the RIAA filed a suit against Aimster, I suspect that they’d name AOL as a co-defendant, and that could get awkward,” Scheirer said.
How Aimster was born--and the current pickle that both the record industry and AOL are in--is a classic tale of Internet technology moving faster than corporate America.
It all started last spring. In March, employees of an AOL unit called Nullsoft created the core technology behind Gnutella, a file-sharing tool that takes the Napster concept one step further, allowing users to trade any kind of file, whether it’s music, video or text.
Nullsoft employees posted the program’s code briefly on the Internet, but AOL deemed the program an “unauthorized freelance project” and yanked the data offline.
But it was too late. Like a computer virus, Gnutella spread everywhere within hours, and developers are continuing the effort outside AOL’s control. Hundreds of Web sites provide Internet users access to the software and insight about the latest developments.
About the same time, Deep and several programmers he knew at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., realized that people could swap files using their IM buddy lists. The question, however, was what kind of files did folks want to exchange?
“Then, in June, a friend of mine started razzing me about why I wasn’t as famous as this 19-year-old kid who started Napster,” Deep said. “I went back to my office and told the guys, ‘I’ve got it. We’re going to mix Napster with AIM.’ ”
Forty days later, they rolled out the first version of the Aimster software on their Web site, https://www.aimster.com.
For AIM users, the service quickly became a hot topic, and more than 1 million people had downloaded the Aimster program within the first five weeks.
The boom initially overwhelmed the tiny start-up, which is financially backed by Deep and investments from friends and family, he said. It took a couple of months to hash out technical problems and expand Aimster’s servers enough to keep the site from shutting down on a semi-regular basis.
Although Aimster users flock to the service to find new tunes, Deep insists the start-up’s future isn’t in music; it’s the much less sexy world of business.
“I see us helping businesspeople to use Aimster to set up mobile corporate networks,” Deep said. “I see a day when we won’t ever need computer servers or IT departments. We’ll conduct all of our business dealings directly with each other over the Internet.”
