But beyond Gnutella and Freenet, which can be cumbersome to learn and use,there's a batch of second-generation companies looking to tap into Napster's zeitgeist without drawing the wrath of the Recording Industry Association of America. Still, just coming up with a cool peer-to-peer application doesn't mean that it'll be made available to the world. Before it decided to pull the plug on the service in mid-October, Angry Coffee's "Percolator" promised to turn visitors onto new music while looking for the tried-and-true. "Run a search at Angry Coffee using the Percolator engine and enjoy unsigned, independent music along with whatever you were looking for in the first place," says the company's Web site. "It's free, there is no software ... and it's much faster than using Napster."

While excited about how peer-to-peer has changed the musical landscape, Angry Coffee's CEO, Adam Powell, has just about reached the conclusion that the future of p-to-p is bleak indeed. (The 30-year-old San Franciscan said he voluntarily pulled down his company's Percolator music search engine - in part because of a pending deal with EMI to promote Radiohead's "Kid A" but mostly because of fear of being sued out of existence.)

"What we're seeing is that once again there is little opportunity to make money and there is little opportunity to really distribute and promote your stuff," he said. "A networked system where you can trade music files should have been a revolutionary thing: It should have changed everything and leveled the playing field and made things easier for artists when it comes to promotion." Instead, Powell said that established artists, like the Beastie Boys, have gotten the message loud and clear from their labels that they're not to personally use the Net for distribution. Powell thinks the p-to-p war is basically over, except for the shouting. "You're going to have three or four subscription services, and none of them will contain all of the catalogs or all of the songs that Napster does," he said."