Forget Napster; IRC's the Place ============================== Napster may be the focus of venom and legal briefs by the recording industry, but it still pales in comparison to Internet Relay Chat for MP3 junkies. When it comes down to massive collections and diversity of choices, DALnet (http://www.dal.net) is MP3 heaven.

DALnet is the third-largest real-time chat network behind EFNet and UnderNet. Like the competitors, it has thousands of channels of various discussions, and only a few of them are for illegal activities. But because it's a more secure and stable network than EFNet and Undernet, it has become a popular place for MP3 trading channels. At any given time, more than 100 channels can be found on DALnet, all for trading MP3s.

There are some major differences between IRC and Napster, the popular utility for swapping MP3 files. IRC is a general chat network with channels that range from file-sharing to the sexually explicit. MP3 accounts for around one percent of the channels on DALnet.

IRC chat clients such as mIRC have a built-in mechanism for sending and receiving files but are far more versatile and stable than the Napster client. For starters, Napster is getting banned everywhere, but IRC isn't. Also, Napster is buggy. There are times when you can't connect to the network and searches are limited to 100 results, even if you tell it to give you more.

That's why IRC is a better choice for MP3s. Even though there are dozens of channels, they all use the same method for finding files, thanks to a script called SPR Jukebox. This script, which works with mIRC, uses the same search command (@locator) to find MP3s from anyone who's offering them.

When you make a search request, the people offering automatically respond with a private message showing what they have. Or you may see a request go by in the main channel. Either way, you send a trigger message and the file name to the channel and the file is either sent your way, or you go into a queue. It'll take five minutes of watching the activity in the channel to figure it out.

So does DALnet have the goods? Indeed it does. In the course of one evening I found all of the artists that my colleague, Christopher Jones, couldn't find on Napster. It took a little while, but Hé¼sker Dé¼ and The Replacements did eventually turn up. Want jazz? Check out #mp3_jazz. One person's 4.5GB collection featured Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Maynard Ferguson, and even Rahssan Roland Kirk.

Among the channels are specialized ones, like #MP3^Oldies_But_Goodies (oldies), #mp3_death (death metal), #mp3-classic-rock and #countrymp3. The biggest channel is #cablemp3, with more than 300 people during evening hours and 20 people offering their collections, each averaging around 1,500 files. The selection is MTV-like, offering the day's most popular bands. Like many channels, #cablemp3 has its own home page.

Easily the biggest collection online belonged to one woman who has 23,000 files totaling a staggering 149GB. This wasn't a onesy-twosy collection, this was whole albums. Lucky for her the Recording Industry Artists of America isn't going after the individual MP3 trader.

The channels #mp3 and #mp3z are right behind #cablemp3 with around 200 users, followed by #mp3_metal with more than 100. Don't tell this bunch heavy metal is dead, and whatever you do, don't request Korn or Limp Bizkit or you'll be out of the channel head-first and not allowed back in.

So what else was there? Well, being an old goat, I searched for the bands I grew up listening to, and there they were: April Wine, Foghat, Foreigner (far too many people only had I Want to Know What Love Is), Blue Oyster Cult, even Blackfoot. Plenty of Yardbirds, too. Obscure metal from the '80s? A mixed bag. Diamond Head and Saxon came up, but a search for Riot only yielded Atari Teenage Riot and Quiet Riot.

A new trend on the channels is trading music videos, and why not? It's not like MTV plays music any more. The videos are big, 40-50MB in many cases. They are either in MPEG1 or AVI format, and some looked like they were taken from a tape, not the television. Others were clearly from TV, such as AC/DC's recent appearance on Saturday Night Live.

The RIAA knows full well what's happening on DALnet, but lucky for the traders there, it has bigger fish to fry. "There are thousands of areas out there, and it's a resource issue," said Frank Creighton, senior vice president and director of anti-piracy for the RIAA. "I have limited resource capability, so we have to focus our efforts on more egregious areas."

But make no mistake about it, the RIAA is monitoring the channels and is sending cease-and-desist letters to people it identifies as regular traders, and it will go after people who ignore the letter. "If we get to the point where we reach out to them and the facts of the case are on our side, we won't send a letter demanding action unless we are prepared to follow up with civil action," Creighton said. "We are not a paper tiger. They've been put on notice to stop the activity. If they don't we're prepared to go further."

DALnet's CEO David Kopstain said it's difficult to censor, and he doesn't have the staff to monitor the network for illegal content, but that doesn't mean he condones it. "Do I agree with the trading of pirated software or child pornography on our network? No," he said. "Do we work freely with law enforcement agencies that are tracking these people down on our network? Yes."