Napster has been a magnet for so many lawsuits lately that you'd think they are the only file-swapping game in town. Not so! There are a surprising number of Napster clones out there, and one of the best is Scour Exchange. In fact, calling it a Napster clone does it a disservice since Scour Exchange has a pretty significant advantage over its more famous competitor: it is not limited to MP3s. Scour Exchange lets users share any kind of audio, image, or video file (broadband users can share entire movies). And while Scour Exchange isn't the only program for swapping multimedia files (Gnutella is more well-known), it has a well-designed and easy to use interface that makes it an excellent choice for both beginners and experts.

Of course, no one cares about the user interface if the program can't find any files. No such worries with Scour Exchange. The installed user base is substantial—remember, you are downloading files from your fellow Scour Exchange users—so your searches will generally produce an impressive list of results.

Scour Exchange has another aspect to its personality that makes it stand out in a crowd. While Scour Exchange is a stand-alone application you can download and install, there is also a companion Web site where you can search for audio, image, or video files. The result is an interesting mix of studio-approved downloads, links to other music sites, and plenty of MP3s. However, the Web site can't compete with the Scour Exchange application in terms of functionality; the application provides access to a larger pool of shared files, lets you organize your multimedia files, and has the always-useful Hotlist feature. So, for this article, we will skip the Scour Web site and head straight to the Scour Exchange application.

Grab the latest beta from ZDNet Downloads and install it. New users will have to go through a quick and easy sign-up process the first time they launch the program.

Next: A Word About The Copyright Issue