AOL-owned Nullsoft, maker of the Winamp digital music player, is a month away from releasing a file-sharing program like Napster, the popular software tool that allows users to share MP3 files anonymously.

Nullsoft's program, called Gnutella, is more than an MP3-sharing program, however. It can also be used to share other file types, such as word processing and HTML files. When Nullsoft briefly made a test version of the program available on March 14, approximately ten-thousand people downloaded it, CNET reported.

A Nullsoft product manager told CNET that the program uses less bandwidth than Napster and allows users to network to each other, rather than through a central website. The program would allow users to create private networks, which would reduce the load on local servers.

Because college students having been heavily using Napster and consuming bandwidth on university networks, some schools have tried to relieve pressure on their networks by blocking access to the Napster site. College students are active MP3 downloaders: a Webnoize study of 800 students, conducted between December 1998 and April 1999, showed that the number of students who each downloaded over 250 MP3 files rose 3000 percent during that period.

The Recording Industry Association of America has filed a lawsuit against Napster, alleging that the site facilitates copyright infringement by allowing users to trade pirated MP3 files. Some musicians and their managers have called Napster pernicious, stating that it allows people to obtain music without compensating the artists.

Free technology advocates contend that instead of making the program illegal, users have fair-use rights and should police themselves. Other pro-Napster forces claim that the program can be used to trade legal MP3 files and other public domain or educational sound files, so it has a valid purpose that warrants its existence.

Representatives of the RIAA and America Online could not be reached for comment about the new program by press time. But it is anticipated that Nullsoft's version of Napster will have an effect on the music industry by continuing the debate over copyright infringement and fair-use file sharing.

Much of the debate has centered on absolute positions--the abolition of Napster-type technology to prohibit piracy vs. its continued existence, with speculation about how artists could still be compensated by file-sharing communities, if at all.

A middle ground could lie in an idea outlined by the Secure Digital Music Initiative, an industry consortium of music labels, software companies and technology companies.

The SDMI specifications call for a security system in which specific rights are connected to each music file that a user downloads. Theoretically, that could mean that users who download files to their computers or portable devices would only be able to play music files on certain machines or to copy the files and email them a limited number of times. In principle, the system of content-based rights management could be applied to Napster-type file sharing.

However, SDMI is far from putting the system into effect and has no authority to do so. And individual SDMI-member companies have their own profit-making agendas, which might prevent the plans from being realized.

Even if the SDMI program is unworkable, some Net music industry analysts believe that it would be possible to invent a different type of content-based rights system. They envision a system that would allow users to trade free material, but would implement a payment system when users wanted to swap copyrighted files.