Ithaca Entrepreneurs Launch File-Sharing Site

CNY Business Journal (1996+), Jun 02, 2000 by Dickinson, Casey J

ITHACA-The Internet community is continually searching for new ways to share information. The founders of Ithaca's OnShare, LLC hope the newest version of the firm's file-sharing software can become the Internet standard.

"We're using our Web site as proof of concept," says Philip Yuen, CEO of OnShare, LLC.

OnShare links users together with an interface program called the file manager. Users can browse through the list of files stored on other 'members' computers. Members can make files available on their computers and copy files from other linked computers. The technology makes every user's hard drive a potential download site for other users.

OnShare will make money, says Yuen, through technology licensing and as an application service provider.

The Ithaca company is seeking an undisclosed amount of capital to expand the site. OnShare has flexible plans for the future, says Yuen. "It all depends on where the investors take us," he adds.

The company initially started in a friend's living room, before other financing allowed OnShare to move into an Ithaca office. OnShare has 15 employees. The site runs on Applied Theory's network and is scalable on a daily basis should the number of users increase rapidly. AppliedTheory also provides a backup, should the Ithaca servers fail, says Yuen.

During his time at Cornell University, Yuen and his college friends saw a demand for technologies to give computer users the ability to copy files from the hard drives on other computers. The growth of file-sharing technology is tied to the explosion in music files known as MP3.

MP3 files are among the Internet's most popular items because they can provide commercial music with CDquality sound and cost nothing. Most MP3 files are created and traded without authorization from the artists whose music they contain. A recent survey credited a drop in CD sales near colleges to the widespread downloading of MP3s. Universities are a central focus of MP3 trading because of the combination of youth and high-speed Internet connections.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and individual artists have taken action against individual pirates in the past but now have turned their attack on the technology. The band "Metallica" is currently suing the operators of the Napster site, charging they have aided the theft of intellectual property by making MP3s available. OnShare has promoted its technology as being similar to Napster.

Despite the similarities to Napster, Yuen says he doesn't believe the company will become a magnet for legal action.

"We're not targeting the same market as Napster," he adds.

OnShare's target market, says Yuen, is the mobile professional who needs access to files when on the road. An OnShare user could retrieve from anywhere in the world a shared file from his office computer. File-sharing systems have more value for those with always-on connections, such as cable and DSL, because both computers must be connected to the, Internet to share files.

The OnShare system also allows users to restrict access to their files to certain individuals. The ability to control the distribution of files is a major difference between Napster and OnShare, says Yuen.

Despite Yuen's business projections of business users, music files far outnumber any other type of file listed on Onshare's site.