Gnutella rides the Net

Open source MP3 application Gnutella, has begun springing up all over the Internet, confounding the efforts of AOL Time Warner to make the software disappear.

Gnutella is a Napster-inspired MP3 application produced by the developers that created Winamp at AOL Time Warner subsidiary Nullsoft.

The appearance of Gnutella is an enormous source of embarrassment for AOL Time Warner. Along with other members of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), AOL Time Warner is suing the student who developed Napster for alleged music piracy.

AOL Time Warner recently forced Nullsoft to pull down the Web site hosting the Gnutella application, and claimed its release had been totally unauthorised. However, proving that it takes more than a multi-billion dollar corporation to beat a few dogged open source programmers, the few who managed to download Gnutella before it was removed have begun posting it on numerous Web sites.

AOL Europe would not comment on the problem, saying it was "a US issue".

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