Wyatt Wasicek was so outraged by the recording industry’s legal assault on users of free music-downloading sites that he decided to ride to the rescue. He created a program called AnonX that masks the Internet address of people who use file-sharing programs such as Kazaa.
Available for $5.95 per month, AnonX sets up a virtual private network, or VPN, between a user’s computer and the company’s computers. The AnonX computers act as proxies, and actually do the Web surfing for the subscriber.
In theory, no one outside of AnonX can see the subscriber’s Internet address — including the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which has forced Internet service providers to turn over subscriber information as part of its campaign to sue hundreds of individual song downloaders, including children.
Wasicek, 29, promises not to divulge his 7,000 users’ Internet addresses, and believes he can’t be forced to do so.
Although Wasicek lives in Austin, Texas, he says AnonX’s official owner lives in Vanuatu, the loosely regulated Pacific island that also hosts Kazaa’s parent company, Sharman Networks Ltd. AnonX’s servers are strategically placed overseas as well.
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