Last month the Recording Industry Association of America filed lawsuits against hundreds of Internet users.
The RIAA accused them of illegally trading digital music files over the Internet using programs such as Kazaa.
The day after the RIAA filed its lawsuits, a company in Stratham sprang into action.
Odysseus Marketing created a Web site offering a free program that it says will enable Internet users to share music files anonymously -- and avoid prosecution.
But as NHPR's Brian McWilliams reports, the software appears to be nothing more than a Trojan horse from a man with a dubious past.
Download music without fear -- that's the pitch at Kazanon.com.
According to the front page of the Web site, if you install the free program offered there you can become invisible, untraceable, and totally anonymous online.
But Walt Rines, president of Odysseus Marketing, admits Kazanon may not function as advertised.
"It attempts to work. I can't tell you how good it works, but there's no guarantee."
Nonetheless, Rines claims 100,000 people have downloaded Kazanon in the past two weeks.
But computer experts say the Kazanon software is what they consider spyware.
It's designed to give Odysseus Marketing a hidden backdoor into users' computers.
"It just tries to get a foothold on your system. Once it's there, it could download and run anything it wants onto your computer."
Joe Stewart is with LURHQ Corporation, a computer security firm in South Carolina.
Rines acknowledges that Kazanon installs a program that he calls adware.
It can be used to gather information about the user's Internet surfing habits -- information that Odysseus could sell to online marketers.
Rines says that the true nature of Kazanon is spelled out in the terms and conditions page at the Kazanon web site.
"If somebody downloads the program, there's an agreement they agree to."
But Cem Kaner says Rines can't hide behind a disclaimer.
Kaner is a lawyer and computer science professor at Florida Institute of Technology.
"A buried-in-fine-print disclaimer doesn't protect the manufacturer from liability."
Rines has quite a history as an Internet marketer.
In the late 1990s, he was a partner with Sanford Wallace, one of the most notorious junk e-mailers in history.
Wallace ran a Philadelphia-based company called Cyber Promotions.
America Online, EarthLink, and several other Internet service providers sued Wallace in 1996.
Wallace is no longer in the spamming business.
He moved to New Hampshire early last year on an invitation from Rines, a Granite state native.
Today, Wallace is the owner and disk jockey at a nightclub in Rochester called Plum Crazy.
Wallace says Plum Crazy's patrons don't know about his past as a spammer.
"I like to keep it separate ... a lot of people misunderstand my past. Unfortunately a lot of advertising is portrayed as an annoyance to many people, so a negative connotation comes along with what I do."
Wallce says Plum Crazy is a financial success and he has no plans to return to Internet businesses.
Rines says someday he and Wallace may team up again.
According to Rines, he'd never do anything illegal.
But he says he'd be willing to do lots of things where the rules haven't been decided.
"If there's a grey area, I'm all for taking the opportunity, from a marketing standpoint."
So far, the legality of Rines' Kazanon site remains unclear.
Officials with the New Hampshire attorney general's office say they have received no complaints about Kazanon.
But the AG's office said it would welcome any information from Internet users who have had problems with the software.
For NHPR News, I'm Brian McWilliams.
