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A L S O_ T O D A Y
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HOTLINE TO THE UNDERGROUND |
Hundreds of international DJs, producers, audio engineers and other music enthusiasts have converged for the past few years on a private server called digitalacid. Hosted whenever his whims dictate by "Jewboy," a recording engineer in his mid-20s, digitalacid is where these techno-philes trade the loops and samples they use to make their own music. It's where they swap tips and chat. And it's where they, occasionally, pick up a "cracked" (illegally duplicated) copy of a piece of expensive audio software. Which, of course, is why Jewboy prefers not to use his real name. Jewboy, digitalacid and its visitors are all part of a growing online underground that's generally referred to by the name of the product that makes it possible: Hotline. There have always been netherworlds on the Net -- realms existing parallel to the Web, populated only by "in the know" geeks and boasting troves of illegal files. If you could figure out how to use some of the convoluted IRC or Undernet software, you might be able to worm your way into these worlds, try to meet some genuine hackers or pick up a cracked copy of Photoshop. But doing so was daunting enough that most people wouldn't even try. Hotline, on the other hand, makes underground access a cinch. But Hotline is not your typical underground. It's largely Mac-based, for one, so its labyrinthine community is populated not just by hackers, gamers and bored teens but by graphic artists, printing companies, university professors, college students and even online newcomers. It's produced by a young company that is trying, painfully, to shed its shareware past and become profitable -- a move that has sparked a bitter lawsuit with Hotline's founder. And it is one of the best places online to study how good shareware can breed a devoted community. Hotline, the product, is a series of shareware applications distributed by Hotline Communications Limited. An Australian teenager named Adam Hinkley created the programs in 1996. Based on a proprietary file transfer protocol, Hotline allows anybody to turn a computer into a server in less than a minute. Visitors to that server can upload and download files, chat and post messages to bulletin boards. Users love Hotline because it incorporates the utility of Internet-standard protocols like FTP (file sharing), IRC (chat) and Usenet (bulletin boards), and does so via a svelte and simple graphical program. It's phenomenally stable, and, by some estimates, 30 percent faster than FTP. Best of all, it's shareware -- which, for most users who don't bother to cough up a voluntary $30 fee, means "free." There are roughly 1.5 million Hotline users, but the servers are dominated by quasi-legal -- or downright illegal -- detritus. The software most visibly serves a constituency of boys between the ages of 13 and 30, who swap MP3 files and porn and impress each other with "kewl" chat. To really explore the underworld of Hotline -- the private servers like digitalacid -- you have to be invited. Explains Jewboy, "Hotline is a place where you have to invest a lot of time. If you're into it, you're way into it, you know where to go and who to know and you have passwords and accounts at private servers. And if you take time off Hotline, people forget who you are, you need updated Hotline software, you have to get new accounts, you have to get started from scratch again." Noah M. Daniels, a 22-year-old software developer and student, is a venerable member of the Hotline community, and can boast of using Hotline back when there were just a few hundred users and a handful of servers. In those days, he explains, Hotline was distributed by word of mouth, and enthusiastic fans would chat nightly with programmer Hinkley and offer their suggestions. Those suggestions would sometimes show up in the product the next day. These days, Daniels runs a private server with an offering of classical MP3s and shareware applications; on most days you can find him chatting with his fiancée (whom he met on Hotline), friends, Hotline buddies and co-workers, nattering a flow of indecipherable in-group slang. His bulletin boards are full of gossip about Hotline, Apple and other geek interests, and the same five or 10 people are logged on to his server almost constantly. He also writes for the Hotline fan news-and-gossip site the Hotline Conspiracy. "Hotline has become primarily a place to download warez or MP3s, but it's also one of the best multiuser chat environments out there," explains Daniels. "The difference between Hotline and other virtual communities is that there is a core of users that's always there. Then there are people who treat Hotline as a way to get files that they are looking for, and just don't care about the sense of community. Unfortunately, the latter group is what exploded with the popularity of Hotline." N E X T_ P A G E .|. Windows users arrive in Hotline land -- and bring the porn with them - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
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