as a bridge between now, where we really don't have any true napster like hotlistng, and tomorrow when they'll be as common as lawsuits, a look at the mozilla style incorporation of aol-im in netscape 7 might be helpful alphabeater. i'm still not sure why no one ever created a successful "im patch" for a p2p, especially in one of the cleaned versions so popular of late. my browser opera allows me to use any of several im schemes inside the window, from aol to msn and icq. i imagine a decentralized p2p could do the same. of course by choosing one you eliminate another but your p2p name (not the same as your im screen name probably) could list what app you're using at any given time and an uploader could then act accordingly and in this way have at least some kind of hotlisting permanence.
i had lots of favorite "partners" on napster, users i miss to this day. although i keep in touch with some whose email addys i managed to get, if napster or morpheus had used aol as a comm tool (you can name your own), i'd still be sharing with dozens of them right now, long after the demise of the initiating clients.
in any event, tg knows of what she speaks. she’s given the problem so much thought if she says it’s coming i’d put money on it.
- js.