Depending on who you ask, file-sharing applications like Napster, Gnutella, and Freenet are either the Anti-Christ or the Messiah; the rhetorical and hyperbolic media and legal spew doesn't appear to recognize any middle ground of reasonable discourse.

And that's a good thing. When it comes to pop culture, it doesn't matter if users like or dislike your material, what counts is how strongly they feel about it. Or, in the parlance of old newsprint: Any ink is good ink. In which case, file-sharing applications are the multi-platinum bullets of the information age, the top of the pops.

But what exactly is file-sharing software? It's anything that allows the swapping of files (audio, graphics, animation, etc.) between users across a network, in this case the Internet. And what do you need to use file-sharing software? For purposes of this article, we'll assume you already have a computer connected to the Internet. Now you need files -- your very own, personally created stuff, right? Otherwise, you could be sued by a trade group representing a consortium of multinational corporations (though it's unlikely that individual users will be prosecuted while Napster and the RIAA work out the legalities of sharing files of copyrighted songs, videos, and the like).

If you have broadband, or near-broadband, connection -- 128 Kbps and above -­ you can download files in no time. But since the speed at which you can download files depends on your connection and the connection of the machine you're downloading from, file sharing over a 56K connection isn't really recommended unless you have lots of time to burn.

Keep in mind that if you leave your computer on, your file-sharing program can run 24/7, and people can download files from your machine even though you, like Elvis, have left the building. If the idea of someone grabbing files from your hard drive gives you the creeps, however, these programs do allow you to close off the file-sharing part of the program (so nobody can upload files). But then you're defeating the whole community aspect of file sharing, and what fun is that?

After downloading Napster, installation is simple and fast. First, you must agree to the lengthy terms and disclaimer. Then you will be prompted for a connection speed, which will be displayed to other users downloading files from your computer. After a prompt to choose a username and password, you should be logged into Napster's central server. Napster then asks if it should search your hard drive for MP3 (or Windows Media) files to share. If you only want to select a few songs to share, just say "no." If you want to share every audio file on your drive, select "yes."

Next, select your file-sharing folder(s). At this point, you might want to create a folder on the desktop called "Napster Music" so as not to confuse yourself later. Since there's no easy way to access a desktop folder in Napster's dialog box (wouldn't it be nice if Napster included a "New Directory" option?), navigate down to C:Program FilesNapsterMusic instead.

Napster then does some networking stuff and tells you if you're behind a firewall. Then you're presented with the default start-up screen: some greeting text with a status bar showing your nickname, how many files you're currently sharing, and how many files are, at this moment, available on the constantly morphing network. You also have the option to "Chat," visit a "Library," "Search," view your "Hot List," "Transfer," and (hooray!) get some "Help."

The "Chat" and "Help" functions are fairly self-explanatory. The "Hot List" allows you to keep track of specific users and the files they're sharing, which is often a good way to find like-minded music fiends. The "Transfer" section shows the status of any files you're downloading as well as anyone who is downloading files from you.

If you want to share files, go to "Library" and you should get a list of your files, along with some controls. If your files don't appear, go back to the desktop and copy the files into your C:Program FilesNapsterMusic folder (which you created earlier). After moving your files over, right-click in the "Library" window and choose "Refresh Library," and voila!

Make sure you remember to set the ID3 tags since they help Napster identify the correct artist and song title. Most MP3 players include a built-in tag editor, and there are also a bunch of tools out there built for ID3 editing, some of which allow you to edit files in batch mode. Rather than store actual genre names, the ID3 tag stores a number that matches a pre-dictated genre. In the humble opinion of these FezGuys, this system is less than perfect since the pre-fab genres are extremely limiting. Bands (and even songs) often fit into multiple genres and current technologies easily allow for multiple listings.

To search for music, click the "Search" section and enter an artist name or song title (or portion thereof), and you'll receive a list of matches. As you might expect, results may vary: Searching for guitarist Joe Satriani's tune "Borg Sex" yields dozens of matches, but searching for songs by the quirky and defunct progrock band "Brand X" results in only partial matches of other songs and bands (including James Brown's "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag"). Advanced search options are available, which may help to hone your results.

Once you find the file you're looking for, it can be downloaded simply by double-clicking on it. Note that files are downloaded into your NapsterMusic directory and will be available to others by default so move them to another directory if you don't wish to share them (and possibly become a target for lawyers).

What's that you say? You never found that Mojo Nixon cover of Perry Como's "Chi-Baba, Chi-Baba" you were looking for? If you're determined to find a particular song or artist, you have two options: Go to the record store and buy it (cheapskate!), or disconnect from Napster (under the "File" menu) and then reconnect (also under "File"). Each time you connect to Napster, you are logged into a server with a new bunch of other Napsterheads. So if you disconnect and then reconnect, you join a new server, and have a new group of hard drives to scour.

We're hopeful that Napster will link their servers together very soon. For now, it isn't possible to tell people they can "go to Napster, search for ," and be 100 percent assured that the music will be found. Another potential problem with the Napster software is that it will, by default, remain running in the background (an icon is displayed in your system tray next to the current time), allowing people to continue downloading from your libraries even after you exit the app. It's easy to forget you're still running Napster, and it can be a little disconcerting to have your connectivity suddenly slow to a snail's pace whenever someone downloads one of your files.

Napster also has a bulletin board system ("Digital Music Forum"), that includes a promising area called "Emerging Artists" where you can discuss promo and encoding. Unfortunately, most of it's just band names and URL posts. This is a common problem with various websites' limited attempts to provide community: Without a moderator nothing stays on topic. If Napster had someone posting tips and encouraging on-topic discussion on a regular basis, the DMF might actually be a useful resource.

And then there's Napster's "New Artist Program" (NAP). Like many other artist upload sites, there's the "find best up-and-coming musicians by typing a band name in the search box, or browse the list of genres below" option. Artists can enter themselves in Napster's database and include a short description, latest news, influences, home town, home page, and genre. While we FezGuys are encouraged by this attempt to offer musicians a useful service, we feel it suffers from the same problem that plagues many upload sites. Namely: How do people find your music? They can't unless they already know the name of your band or a song title. Back in the glory days of recommendation service sites (like Firefly), people could find a band based on a love of the style of a similar band musician. Listen.com gets you closer to the music, but there's still a lot of room for improvement.

"Be Part of the Music Revolution" the Macster site crows as we get right to the meat of the matter and download the Macster app. The 523K Stuffit file blasts over our DSL connection in under 20 seconds (even though we're running an older Mac 8600 running OS 8.6), and a file is dumped on our desktop, ready to use.

The interface is tiny and text in the message bar reads "not connected." We rush to the menu and hit "connect." Almost instantly the message bar changes to "864,106 songs in 7985 libraries (3511 gigs)." Holy Moly! All free? Anytime, anywhere? Of course, that figure changes all the time. We click "Search" and enter Genesis (OK, we admit it, we're progrock hags) under "Artist." For "Song" we enter "Carpet Crawlers," knowing full well there's a new version recorded only recently by the original band members (including Peter Gabriel!).

We search ... and there it is! About 17 different files of the same song, weighing in at 7.4MB apiece. The "Result" window also tells us the bitrate (that the file was encoded at), length of song, user (the person who made the file available on the network), line speed (the user's connection), and something called ping (in this case 235 ms or milliseconds).

What is this ping? The website Help FAQ file has this to say: "The lower the Ping, the faster/closer the user is to you, which usually means a faster download."

Double-clicking on the icon for the song in the "Search Results" window opens a "Transfer" window. Under "progress," a little line crawls sideways. In general, download speeds tend to vary and this is no exception, dumping down to less than 1.5 K/sec and then ramping back up to 17.2 K/sec. The speed of your connection, the speed of their connection, and the overall amount of traffic on the network will radically affect download times. The best time to download is usually when everyone else is asleep. But even then, all the servers on the network are sometimes busy (this thing is popular!), and your connection attempt is rebuffed. Keep trying, though, and you'll eventually get in (think of it as similar to auto-dialing a terrestrial radio station to win tickets). Of course, you can be kicked off the volatile network at a moment's notice, and we were, many times.

In this case, after five minutes, "Carpet Crawlers" has been download and it now resides on our desktop (where we instructed Macster to save our files). We're officially criminals.

This particular file has been encoded at the relatively high bitrate of 192Kbps, and it sounds almost indistinguishable from CD audio, with none of the artifacts typically found in MP3-encoded files. Sometimes people don't do a very good job of encoding their audio; files encoded at 128Kbps sound way better than files encoded at 64Kbps. But 192Kbps is almost worth paying for -- though we always prefer true 44.1K/16bit CD audio quality when it comes to shelling out cash.

Macster offers more than just the ability to acquire MP3 files across the Internet. There are chat rooms with user profiles. Users can invent personas and communicate with other alter egos.

And did we mention it's free?

Gnutella -- which, unlike Napster/Macster, lacks a central server (clients connect directly with each other) and has the ability to share any kind of filetype (as opposed to just MP3) -- comes from somewhat scandalous beginnings. The program was created by the founders of Nullsoft, who also built Winamp, the first prime-time MP3 player. Gnutella hit the Net in the spring of 2000, and quickly caused a stir in the file-sharing community and at parent company AOL, which promptly shut it down. But the cat was already out and about, running, scratching, and clawing its way around the web.

Gnutella source code is freely available, and anyone can participate in GnutellaNet for the creation of "Next Generation Gnutella Protocol." Because the protocol is public and people are encouraged to write their own, the application is practically guaranteed a long and healthy life. Long live Open Source!

And now that Napster has been threatened by the courts, Gnutella's use has jumped exponentially: Based on a random sampling in the very early morning hours, Gnutella had 2,500 active users compared to Napster's 3,500. Although Napster's unconnected multiple servers make it impossible to accurately count the active users, Gnutella is fast becoming just as popular.

To jump on the Gnutella bandwagon, go to this site for a Windows version, or follow one of the links for clones of Mac, Linux, Perl, Java, etc. Installation is quick and painless. No multi-page licenses, no queries about age, gender, or telephone number. In fact, no username.

Though the minimalism is refreshing, it reveals that the current form of Gnutella is more for seasoned hackers than mom-and-pop users. There are no unnecessary bells or whistles like chat rooms, and help within the application is limited. There are clear instructions on the website, however, so anyone with a little patience shouldn't have problems (unless you're easily offended by some mild profanity in the instructions).

In any case, sharing files is fairly straightforward. Just click on "Config" and select "Add directory" to select the directory(s) that house the filetypes you wish to share. (We used C:Program FilesNapsterMusic) Click the "Rescan" button and make sure the "Files Scanned" displays the correct number of files in the directory you wish to share. Next, enter your correct connection speed. The app comes defaulted to 28.8K, so if you have a 256K DSL connection, enter "256."

Next, enter the host you want to use to hook into the network (some host choices are listed on the home page under "Need a host?"). Click on "GnutellaNet" in the top left and enter (or copy and paste) one of those hosts into the space next to the "Remove" and "Add" buttons (We used gnet.ath.cx). Click "Add" and it connects to the server and loads up a few others. Soon the information under "GnutellaNet stats" begins to update with information about how many hosts and files are available. Incidentally, Gnutella has a nice feature that allows for streaming files instead of downloading. This is useful if you're working with audio files and want to sample a few before deciding to download an entire song.

Scour.net's Scour Exchange (SX) client is modeled after Napster, and has many of the same features discussed above.

But like Gnutella, SX deals with media types beyond just MP3 (such as images) and has released the specifics of their protocol and encouraged people to write their own clients. While Scour Exchange is currently available only for Windows, plans for a UNIX version, with an "open source license," are in the works. Mac plans are unknown but, since a Perl version has already been posted, it may not be long until a Mac programmer decides to make one. There is no chat function, but a note on the website mentions its inclusion in an undated future release.

Downloading and installing SX (like Napster) is fast and easy. Typical lengthy legalese pops up, but is easily clicked through. Unlike Napster, SX is kind enough to ask first if it should be placed in your startup folder upon installation. You have to set up a member account, which requires a first and last name, email address, zip code, gender, and age. (We thought about posing as a 5-year-old female -- sites requiring unnecessary information deserve what they get.) SX then offers to scan your drives for media folders that you can choose whether to share on a case-by-case basis. For variety, we let it search, but then quickly deselected all but our C:Program FilesNapsterMusic folder. SX doesn't include subdirectories in its libraries, so if you have more than one directory of media to share, you might want to let SX scan your drive (but we were just glad for that "Clear All" button).

SX is divided into Napsteresque sections: "Find Media" (aka "Search"), "Media Library," "File Transfer," and "Hotlist." Scour's greeting page -- "SX Now!" -- provides the latest news and also profiles downloads emphasizing not only the audio available, but video, animations, and imagery.

In either case, the existing distribution systems for pop culture goods are feeling the heat. Music, books, movies, and the like depend on the economics of scarcity to support the bloated infrastructure that delivers the product to a user. File sharing negates the entire system. It's that simple. Owners of the distribution system are not just put out by file sharing, they're terrified of it. To them file sharing looks like total anarchy: No control, no revenue, no business.

The FezGuys would like to see traditional distribution come to their senses (ha ha) and work with file-sharing technologies for the benefit of all. The major record labels recently struck a licensing agreement with MP3.com for its My.mp3.com service, and it’s not hard to imagine a similar compromise with Napster.