Everyone else does. Meet the one-stop shop for everything from MP3s to A Beautiful Mind and every Game Boy title on the market.
Dan Verner pipes music into his bathroom. Same for his living room, kitchen, and every last corner of his home. He wired his place with a 28-speaker stereo system that cycles through 3,000 songs, ranging from 200 Elvis Presley tunes and all the early Beatles to classical, hip hop, blues, and concert bootlegs - even Axl Rose doing "White Christmas." "I have enough music to run a radio station," he says. "I could let it play for a week and it wouldn't run out."
Not long ago, compiling a Sam Goody-style assortment of popular and hard-to-find music would have taken a lot of money and some great connections. But Verner hasn't spent a dime, and his only real connection comes in the form of a cable modem. Lord of the Borrowers, as he's known in the peer-to-peer file-sharing world, is just a regular guy with a knack for collecting free stuff.
It's been almost a year since a federal court sided with the Recording Industry Association of America and forced Napster to shutter its network. The thinking was clear: Stop the technological enabler, and the illegal transfer of copyrighted songs should grind to a halt. But that hasn't happened. Thanks to the many services that have risen up since Napster's demise - Audiogalaxy, BearShare, iMesh, KaZaA, LimeWire - sharing has continued. Millions of users are still swapping billions of files. What's different is the quality and breadth of what's now changing hands. Today, anyone can find big-budget films, music videos, high-end software, vintage porn, and of course, a whole lotta audio.Lord of the Borrowers logs on with a client called Morpheus, which allows him to swap files not only with Morpheus users but also with anyone on BearShare, LimeWire, or any other part of the Gnutella network. And more sharers are signing up all the time. Morpheus has been dragged from Download.com more than 71 million times in the past year.
Obsessive? Definitely. The top 20 percent of Gnutella users are responsible for 98 percent of all files shared.
Verner spends several hours every day seeking out new files to add to his 54-gigabyte collection. For a while, music was his passion, but he's moved on. Long before most people had even read a review ofThe Lord of the Rings, he had held a screening of the epic in his home. Same for Harry Potter, A Beautiful Mind, and *Black Hawk Down.*He has accumulated nearly 2,500 movie, video, and software titles. "I have every Game Boy game on the market," says the 44-year-old part-time computer consultant. "All the animators, all the Photoshop programs, and Microsoft Draw."A decade ago, Verner was just another pop-music fan who knew nothing about computers. That changed after he got knocked off a ladder by a 600-volt electrical current. In that moment, he had a heart attack and dropped to the floor - a fall that crushed the vertebrae in his neck and put an end to his career as an electrician. "Before that, I was a workaholic," he remembers. "All of a sudden I found myself at home, staring at four walls." He bought a PC and began tinkering. Even while taking 1,800 milligrams of morphine a day to fight the pain, he taught himself how to repair computer systems. Then he discovered P2P.To anyone who can't afford to take the family to the movies or buy the latest PlayStation 2 title, Verner has become that lady at the end of the block who gives away full-size Snickers bars on Halloween - except he's handing out thousands of files. "Users look for people like me," he admits. The moment Verner logs on, visitors begin poring over his collection. He saves bandwidth by limiting outbound files to eight at a time, but is otherwise wholly accommodating. He rotates through hard drives to maintain a fresh offering of roughly 1,900 titles, and constantly monitors user activity. "If someone gets greedy, I'll shoot them a note and say, 'Give someone else a chance.'"Snoedog, a fellow Morpheus user, has been feasting on Verner's collection for four years. "If there's something I have to have, I'll check with him first," she says. "He's got everything."Which raises a question. What motivates someone to collect more music than he could ever possibly listen to, more movies than he can watch, more games than he could ever play - and so actively spread the wealth? It's no stretch to say Verner's responsible for millions of dollars in lost revenue for the record labels and movie studios. And while he considers those industries "damn greedy," it's not malice that drives him. "A lot of people out there don't have any idea what their computer really is for and how much they can enjoy it," he says. "I think I'm doing a public service."
He's not alone. Take the Orange County, California, homemaker who goes by the handle Canary. Dialing in on a modem, she has collected 3,000 files and leaves her line open at all times so that others can have at her collection. To her, it's about being neighborly. "If we borrow our neighbor's tools," she says, "are we robbing the tool manufacturer of the revenue they deserve?"
Jack, a Detroit DJ, has downloaded more than 12,000 files mainly from FTP servers run by other DJs looking to spread the word about the fast-moving dance-music scene. "I download 100 songs and listen to each for 30 seconds to see what I like," he says. "I do still buy records - just not as many as I would."
Obsessive? Definitely. But as the battle over file sharing intensifies in the world's courtrooms, users like Verner, Canary, and Jack are providing the content that keeps the P2P community alive. According to a study performed by Xerox PARC researchers, the top 20 percent of Gnutella users are responsible for 98 percent of all files shared. These supersharers prime the network for an influx of users, which in turn creates a plump market for technology providers and advertisers. Thanks to them, file sharing has even improved in some ways since Napster's passing. Now, when you crash mid-download, Morpheus will pick up where it left off.
With broadband connections more common, it's also easier to find and download high-quality files. But viruses are more prevalent, too, as are pop-up ads and porn. This bothers the Lord of the Borrowers because his son has recently taken to file sharing. But not to worry. "I'm running a program on his machine that I got off of Morpheus," says Verner. "It records everything he types."
Modern problems, after all, require modern solutions.
THE MUSIC ISSUE
Organization Moby
Beat Manifestos
Songs in the Key of F12
Would You Download Music From This Man?
Six Machines That Changed The Music World
