Just discovered Gnutella (how did I miss this one?). At first glance it doesn’t seem much different than an FTP/WWW server/search engine for everyone, which Apple started shipping with the OS a while ago. A key difference is that this is anonymous; It seems you can’t reference a server by an IP address; your identity is only revealed when you download.
Wonderful quotes from the Gnutella support page:
“Gnutella Is Designed to Survive Nuclear War”
“…hungry lawyers are probably more destructive than nuclear weapons…Gnutella Can Withstand A Band of Hungry Lawyers “
“Gnutella is nothing but a protocol. It’s just freely-accessible information. There is no company to sue. No one entity is really responsible for Gnutella.”
I suppose that could bring up the ultimate Internet legal battle, trying to outlaw a protocol.