premature is right colinmacc. i don't know what planet those guys are living on (anyone here write for them btw?) but the reason fasttrack is so popular is not because it's cool or a great place to hang, it's popular because it's best at doing what people need it to do - complete their downloads. if and when gnutella gets better at this game than fastrack, gnutella will dethrone kazaa/grokster. forget about the 2nd network - the avg user doesn't know and when told doesn't get it. when he finally gets it he doesn't care. only when bde affects his downloads will we see any real migration off the primary network, but the kazaa group would have to be stupid to ruin the effectiveness of their system. why would they do that? they'd be left with nothing. bde is an insurance policy against the day (soon perhaps) the courts shut down the primary network. if that happens then unlike napster, they'll have a "legitimate", operating 2nd network already installed, already working and already making money. but until then it's the tail wagging the dog. if fastrack is shut at least they'll have something, but the real money will be in keeping today's users as happy as they can within that framework.
remember what they say about real estate? you can apply it to p2ps - download, download, download. enable that and you've just about done it all.
sure a few of us may migrate, who knows. but we won't see huge numbers fleeing this party to go another one tha't worse. gnutella/winmx/blubster have a long way to go before they can unseat the dutch.
- js.
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