When a federal judge shut down Napster in 2001, Kazaa parent Sharman Networks quickly stepped in as the replacement of choice, signing up millions of users and even surpassing its predecessor in some respects. Since then, however, newcomers such as eDonkey and BitTorrent have been coming on strong amid reports that millions of people are logging off Sharman's network.
Although it's too early to draw broad conclusions about Sharman's future, experts said many people appear to be shopping more intently than ever for file-swapping alternatives that incorporate improvements in peer-to-peer technology that have not yet made it onto Kazaa.
"At heart, most of these peer-to-peer users are lazy," said Chris Hedgecock, president of Zeropaid, a popular portal site dedicated to file-swapping services. "Kazaa was simply the easiest way to get things they were looking for. Now they're being frustrated. It's taking longer to get files, so they're looking elsewhere."
Having traded billions of files over Kazaa, file swappers are trading in the popular peer-to-peer client for a new generation of software, throwing a monkey wrench into Sharman's plans to turn its network into a legal and profitable media distribution channel. It's not clear how many people have jumped ship so far, but one recent study estimated that the service lost some 5 million users between November 2003 and February.
Signs of migration underscore the sometimes evanescent success of media rebels facing attacks from record labels and movie studios. Not only has Sharman itself been hit with lawsuits seeking to shut it down; thousands of its customers have been charged with civil copyright infringement violations, and media companies have flooded its network with fake files to interfere with file-swapping activities.
Sharman Networks declined requests to comment for this story. A company representative said reports of a decline in its user base were inconclusive.
