BY VINCE HORIUCHI
      THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

      PROVO -- Six of Utah's top technology leaders testified before Utah
      Sen. Orrin Hatch at Brigham Young University on Monday about the
      future of the Internet.
 
      But it was a 19-year-old kid in a baseball cap nicknamed "The
      Napster" who got the rousing applause from the audience. 

          Shawn Fanning, the teen inventor of the song-swapping software
      and service known as Napster, took center stage at a U.S. Senate
      Judiciary field hearing, and the audience of more than 500 students
      gave him a welcome usually reserved for a rock star. Many even
      asked for his autograph after the hearing in the Wilkinson Student
      Center. 

          "He's 19 years old, and he's doing great," Hank Barry, Napster Inc.
      chief executive officer, said about Fanning's testimony Monday. "We
      come out to events like this . . . and everybody's very enthusiastic,
      and it makes you feel really good." 

          Fanning was part of a seven-person panel that convened to talk
      about new technologies for the Internet and how his program is
      redefining the World Wide Web.

         Last year, Fanning hammered out a small piece of software in three
      months -- while a freshman at Northeastern University in Boston --
      that allows people to freely trade musical computer files, known as
      MP3s. Napster 's explosive popularity (32 million have downloaded the
      program in one year) is forging new thinking on the Internet and
      igniting one of the hottest debates on the Web because music
      companies believe the program promotes software piracy. The major
      music labels have filed suit against Napster, claiming the program
      violates copyright laws. 

        But Napster has also created the biggest buzzword on the Web:
      "peer-to-peer" technology, or the ability to create a network of regular
      computer users who can freely share files. Now businesses are
      embracing the technology. 

        "Think how much faster and more efficient the Internet would be if,
      instead of always connecting you to a central server every time, you
      click on to a Web site, your computer could find the source that
      housed that information nearest to you," Fanning testified. "If a kid
      down the hall had it [a needed file] on their machine, why travel
      halfway around the world to retrieve it?" 

          An Orem software company, NextPage, developed a program
      similar to Napster but for businesses. Employees using it trade files,
      including documents and sales reports. NextPage now has more than
      100 clients using their software. 

          "While lawyers were busy filing suit against Napster's peer-to-peer
      offering, the world's largest law firm, Baker & McKenzie, was
      implementing NextPage's peer-to-peer technology," said the
      company's CEO, Brad Pelo, at the hearing. "Peer-to-peer
      technologies are nothing to be feared." 

        Also included in the panel were Richard Nelson of the Utah
      Information Technologies Association; Robert Simmons, chief financial
      officer of Campus Pipeline in Salt Lake City; Craig Miller, general
      manager of the Net Management Group of Novell; D. Brent Israelson,
      founder of iLumin, a Utah-based company that enforces online
      transactions with digital signatures; and Utah musician Peter
      Breinholt. 

        But it was clear students who crowded Monday's hearing were
      there to catch a glimpse of Fanning, who was sporting a BYU baseball
      cap given to him by Hatch. Fanning, in turn, presented Hatch with a
      Napster T-shirt. 

          "He's going up against the music industry alone. He's representing
      the future." said BYU physics major Tim Fowers, 22, who watched the
      hearing. "We're proud of him." 

        Tribune Correspondent Jessica Kehr contributed to this story. 
          To listen to Monday's Senate hearing in streaming audio, log on to
      www.sltrib.com/shout.