Network Shares Audio and Video, Screens Out Bootlegs

Or rather, it is the Internet.

Homer and erstwhile Netscape wunderkind Marc Andreessen are using file-sharing technology to distribute audio and video files for free online. Unlike Kazaa and other popular "peer-to-peer" programs, however, Open Media Network allows only authorized sharing and weeds out bootlegged goods.

The nonprofit network is designed to be an outlet for anyone who creates audiovisual works -- be it an independent filmmaker, a public television station or a hobbyist with a camera or a microphone.

The effort tries to tap the growth in noncommercial and grass-roots media epitomized by weblogs, the personal websites frequently updated with fresh reporting, commentary and creativity.

Weblogs have grown from a handful of sites in 1997 to about 31 million today, by Open Media Network's count.

More broadly, the rise in high-speed Internet connections has fueled an evolution of the Web from a medium heavy on text and graphics into a source of music and moving pictures as well. And the proliferation of low-priced digital camcorders and recording gear has created millions of potential producers of entertainment and information in search of an audience.

The challenge for organizations such as Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Open Media Network, though, is generating a market for this new material, said John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

Such efforts can attract an audience if users can easily pick through the "undifferentiated mass" and find what interests them, Palfrey said. "But I think most of them are going to fail," he added, because "they won't get that stuff right, and it will just be a mass that's very hard to sort through."

All the same, the field has drawn some big players. Both Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. are building collections of video files -- including television shows and homemade movies -- that users can search through and, in some cases, watch.

"I really believe there's a big, huge publishing revolution," said Homer, who has provided some of the start-up capital for Open Media Network. "A new system like this can take advantage of it."

Open Media Network's approach is different from Google's and Yahoo's in at least two important ways.