As soon as an online music-trading service gets big enough to be useful, it’s doomed: The Gnutella paradox. Online music traders waiting to hear if Napster will be shut down repeat, ‘There’s always Gnutella.’ “Is there, though? …Gnutella is hardly ready for prime

time — and is facing dilemmas almost as worrisome as the

Napster lawsuit. Over the last month, users of the system

have noticed a dramatic slowdown in responsiveness, and a

number of reports have revealed serious instabilities in the

Gnutella network. The open-source software developers

who nabbed the program after America Online forced its

programmers to abandon it are still striving to learn how to

work together. And Gnutella’s legal status is also murky:

The RIAA is already hinting that it may be preparing a

strategy to attack Gnutella.” Wired