Brilliant and Bermeister have played a central role in many of the events shaping the file-swapping world in the past few months. Bermeister began distributing his company's 3D advertising software along with the Kazaa software last year. That's how he got to know the founders of Kazaa, the Dutch company that created the file-swapping technology originally used by Kazaa, Morpheus and Grokster. When the Kazaa founders decided they didn't want to be in the network business, Bermeister introduced them to a former associate in Australia, Nicola Hemming. Her new company, Sharman Networks, bought the Kazaa software and continues to distribute it. Bermeister is now drawing on his association with the Dutch programmers for his new venture. Brilliant has created a new company for the peer-to-peer service, called Altnet. It has licensed the Dutch programmers' technology from their new venture, called Blastoise. According to Brilliant's annual report, filed Monday, the Dutch programmers have taken a 49 percent stake in Altnet. Brilliant has been subpoenaed in the record labels and big movie studios' copyright infringement lawsuit against Kazaa. No suit has been filed against Brilliant or Sharman Networks, however. The immediate plans for Altnet, Brilliant and the new peer-to-peer network remain unclear. Bermeister said the company had been testing the technology along with ad giants DoubleClick as a way to serve ordinary Web ads more quickly. Under this plan, an ad that a person sees on a Web site might be hosted by a nearby computer running Brilliant's Altnet instead of on a central ad server, as now typically happens with DoubleClick. Brilliant's chief executive was quick to note that people would be asked before their computers were used for this or other purposes. He said the software would show a pop-up box explaining the network's function and giving people a chance to turn it off. People who allow their computers to be used will be compensated somehow, possibly with gift certificates or free videos, the company's filing said. However, people who accept "terms of service" already distributed with Brilliant's and Kazaa's software are already agreeing to let their computers be used without any payment at all. "You hereby grant (Brilliant) the right to access and use the unused computing power and storage space on your computer/s and/or Internet access or bandwidth for the aggregation of content and use in distributed computing," the terms of service read. "The user acknowledges and authorises this use without the right of compensation." Anybody who declines this provision is not able to install the Kazaa file-swapping software. A representative for Sharman, which distributes the Kazaa software, could not be reached for comment. Privacy-rights advocates contacted for comment expressed some concern about the way the Altnet software has been distributed and about whether the millions of people who already have it installed on their computers will be tech-savvy enough to know what they're agreeing to when and if Brilliant does ask to use their computers. "A lot of the people most likely to use this software are teenagers or college students. There's a lack of sensitivity about privacy in that age group," said Larry Poneman, chief executive of Privacy Council, which helps companies manage privacy issues. "Do they really want to be commandeered and have their machines do things that aren't necessarily in their best interest?"
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