Free access to an almost unlimited database of music is any music fan's dream but is the phenomenon of file sharing too good to be true or is it here to stay?

Napster has been treated by some as the anti-Christ of the music industry, but Gnutella, software which offers the ability to share every type of file via the Internet, could pose a much more serious threat - not just to the music industry but to all copyright holders.

While Napster, which claims to have in excess of 10 million users, is being sued by the Recording Industry Association of America - whose members include Sony, Bertelsmann and Time Warner, as well as Metallica and Dr Dre - it will not be possible to make any single individual responsible for Gnutella.

Gnutella does not operate through a centralised server, does not have a company which owns it and works by transferring files directly from one user's computer to another.

Supporters see file-sharing software as a natural progression of the free pool of information which is integral to the Internet.

Even though veiled threats of legal action against users of Napster have been issued in the United States, Irish people who download unlicensed or pirated music from the Internet in whatever format are not leaving themselves open to legal action.

However, under new legislation which is due to come into effect this month anybody who is found to have "made available" such material on the Internet to others could be prosecuted.

Mr Michael McElligot, of Mason, Hayes, Curran solicitors, said one of the main problems associated with copyright or intellectual property violations in Ireland hitherto was the lack of penalties in place for violations. New legislation with added criminal penalties will change this. Courts will be able to impose fines of up to £100,000 (€126,974) or a sentence of up to five years in prison for those infringing copyright on the Internet.

However, the fact that the Internet operates on a transnational or global scale means that violation of the copyright of Irish artists or organisations in foreign territories would have to be pursued there.

For smaller artists and musicians, taking the route of litigation in a foreign country may not be financially possible and even if they received a ruling in their favour in Ireland, it could not be enforced abroad.

The new laws could, however, open Irish Internet service providers (ISPs) to even more liability with regard to copyright infringement. If the ISP were made aware through a complaint by an artist or individual that material infringing copyright was being made available through its service, and it did nothing about it, it could be prosecuted, under the legislation, for "making available" the information.

Partners of companies or organisations making such material available are also open to prosecution. Many people will question the difference between two people physically swapping a cassette which they then copy and maybe pass on to another friend who does the same, and doing so over the Internet with files stored on their desktop.

Although it may sound like an anachronism to most Irish people, recording an album from a friend is a gross violation of copyright said Mr McElligot and could, in theory, leave the person open to legal proceedings.

The eternal debate as to what loss is incurred by recording companies from clandestine copying of music by consumers has raged for years, with neither side able to substantiate what effect such activities have.

Mr Eamonn Shackleton, of the Irish Music Rights Organisation, said the recording industry had claimed that the advent of the cassette, with its openness to copying, had stunted its growth which had had a knockon effect on artists' contracts.

The Napster case also raises the question of whether an Internet directory can be held liable for permitting users to engage in sharing, which is encouraged on a small scale, simply because the Internet increases the extent of sharing.

While the Internet has offered the opportunity to some artists to introduce their music on the world stage away from the tentacles of the large music companies, the development of file sharing was a relatively unforeseen threat.

Napster and Gnutella allow users to download a small free piece of software to their desktops which gives access to files on the hard drives of millions of Net surfers.

The US recording industry association instituted legal proceedings against Napster in December to try to recover millions of dollars it says its members have lost in CD sales.

MP3.com, which operates an online music library allowing people to listen to an 80,000 CD collection, recently settled a similar lawsuit with Time Warner after a judge ruled the company had violated copyright.

Napster has also struck deals with independent labels and unsigned artists to make their music available through its software and is said to be in talks to settle the lawsuit with the industry body. The Napster software was developed by Mr Shawn Fanning, a first-year student at North-eastern University in Boston, a few months ago.

Open-source initiatives often have universal appeal for Internet users, while making the corporates cringe at the revenues they are losing as a result of the free exchange of software.

Development of more advanced software such as Gnutella, which works by connecting the user to one other user on the network without a server and works through a huge "daisy chain" of computers each connected to a few others, is picking up pace.

With Gnutella each person on the network is considered a hub or, to put it another way, everybody on the network is a client and a server at the same time.

Developers of the software claim it puts the power of information sharing, the basis of the Internet, back into the hands of the user. Copyright-holders generally tend to disagree.

If the sales of portable MP3 players, which could soon hold more than 200 albums worth of music, pick up, the effect of file sharing could have a wide-ranging impact on the music industry.

This coupled with bandwidth increases could see film associations and any range of businesses fighting to keep control of their main asset, copyrighted material.

Gnutella was originally developed by programmers at Nullsoft, the online music company bought last year by America Online. The project was shelved by AOL which is merging with Time Warner, but not before a version of the program had been distributed online.

The developers of Gnutella have now developed a search engine based on the same technology which they say is much more efficient than existing search engines at finding up-to-date information.

Sites that want to be part of the network can run a piece of software inside their databases which will recover up-to-the minute search results.

Traditional search engines use electronic spiders to retrieve information which they then put in a database which can take days or even weeks to archive for their users to access.

The file-sharing phenomenon shows both the massive potential of the Internet to change the existing order as well as how little control corporations have over developments in the wilds of the Web.