Here is what

http://gnutella.wego.com/

is currently saying:

"Due to the unprecedented traffic volume following the Napster decision we had to take the servers offline temporarily to increase bandwidth and capacity. The www.gnutella.wego.com site will be up again in a few hours as soon as the necessary upgrades are completed. "

The rats are leaving the ship in mass :)

I also read the follow article by by Ben Charny, ZDNet News:
http://news.excite.com/news/zd/000727/14/musicians-fight-for

"But the record industry and some other MP3 company executives say the public had better get ready for a big disappointment when the record companies finally roll out their catalogs onto the Internet. Savings will be in the pennies, they said.

The cost of encryption to secure downloads is just one extra price to pay to offer music online. Then comes watermarking, content protection, distribution and merchant gateways before it reaches the listener.

Record companies will also have to spend large sums on cataloging, copyright tracking and distributing royalties to the artists, the executives said. "

I guess record companies are missing the point. It sounds like they are trying to make digital music as expensive as possible, for no apparent reason other to maintain status quo.

The future is digitally delivered music at minial cost and minimal infrastructure.

BD