Forget MyMP3 or Napster -- Aimster is the stake in the heart of the record industry. Piggybacking on America Online's popular instant-messaging program, this file-sharing system makes swapping tunes much easier than Napster, much more reliable than Gnutella and likelier to withstand legal action than the other major players. It integrates with your "buddy list," so you're sharing files with people you know, not with the 10,000 strangers who happen to be on the same Napster node as you at any given time; that's what insulates Aimster against prosecution. Even Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, has accepted that making a tape for your friends won't necessarily lead to the end of civilization.
The latest version of Aimster works with a variety of instant-messaging clients, not just AOL's Instant Messenger -- or AIM, thus "Aimster" -- and ICQ, but also competing messaging systems from Microsoft, Napster and Yahoo. But the name Aimster and the dominance of AOL's underlying instant-messaging system emphasize how important AOL, which is poised to ingest the Warner family of record labels, is to the success of Aimster. AOL could stop Aimster if it wanted to. Why hasn't Steve Case closed off this particular leaky faucet?
It would be an easy operation. Just as AOL changed its server-side software to boot users of competing instant-messaging programs off its network, AOL could refuse entry into its closed system to anyone with Aimster installed on her hard disk. But AOL hasn't, despite the likelihood that thousands of sound recordings to which Warner owns the copyright -- including those from kill-Napster poster boys Metallica -- are being swapped on Aimster.
You'd think it would be in AOL's interest to protect something it owns. But for both short-term and long-term reasons, it isn't.
The short-term reason is the easy one. AOL doesn't want to do anything to incur the wrath of the regulatory agencies that have to bless its pending takeover of Time Warner. The company's alleged monopoly position in the instant-messaging market is a sore point for regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. Any attempt to exert what someone might consider undue control over its instant-messaging network at this time would be unwise.
Even after all the lawyers and bureaucrats have their say, AOL may not close off Aimster. In its Microsoft-like push toward world domination, AOL understands that the surest way to control intellectual property is to control the platform on which that intellectual property is transmitted. Microsoft isn't concerned about people swapping e-books encoded in the Microsoft Reader format, because the only way to transfer those books is by using the Reader system, every copy of which is registered in Redmond. AOL doesn't have a unique file format, but it does have a unique platform.
More active involvement by AOL in Aimster might be an easier way toward monetizing file-swapping than the Bertelsmann-Napster attempt. By adding toll booths to a network it controls, AOL could charge individuals for use under a variety of payment schemes, such as subscription or a la carte. No doubt such an arrangement would be anathema to the file-swapping community, but it's reasonable to assume that in 18 months two types of file-swapping services will exist: Wild West towns like Freenet and Gnutella that offer endless possibility (tracks don't have to be approved) and endless risk (rickety connections, "bomb" files), or officially sanctioned ones that have less choice and fewer quirks but are safer and better lit. It's clear where most of the fun will be after such a split, but the combination of interest in file-swapping and lack of interest in finding one's Gnutella "host catcher" -- cumbersome Net addresses that would-be Gnutella users must find and install -- means there's a huge opportunity for a la rge entertainment company that tries file swapping. And AOL doesn't have to develop software, since the nice folks behind Aimster saved it that trouble.
Will AOL try this after its regulatory hurdles are behind it? Perhaps. Could it work more smoothly than AOL's attempt to integrate the renegades at WinAmp who snuck out Gnutella? That, my friends, is even iffer than a Gnutella connection.
Jimmy Guteman is president of the Vineyard Group, a consultancy.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Standard Media International
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group
