The legality of either is not the real issue. The real issue is that Gnutella CANNOT BE SHUT DOWN. There is NO WAY at all, EVER that someone could shut it down. On the other hand, Napster can easily be shut down. And if you want ot talk about illegal stuff, then technically NONE of what you you people are saying is actually illegal. Napster isn't illegal. MP3s aren't illegal. Even cd rippers aren't illegal. The illegal part is the transmission of songs in any form. Therefore since napster ASSISTS transfering illegal files, it CAN be considered illegal. Since gnutella does the same, it also CAN be considered illegal. However, gnutella is not MP3s only, so is it less legal? If there are different degress of lagality, where do you draw the line? Certainly email is still legal if you send mp3s to your friends so what defines lagality? I don't think that the music industries cares. They just want to shut down whatever is costing them money. However, it all goes back to the same original fact that gnutella CANNOT be shut down and Napster CAN.