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p2pnet, which has been run by Canadian Jon Newton since 2002, has seen the site's income fall by 80 per cent since the music industry - or Big 4 Organized Music as Newton prefers to refer to the major record companies and their RIAA mouthpiece - began taking legal action against p2p software developers, his main source of advertising revenues.

Having started p2pnet in his spare time, Newton soon gave up work as a journalist to run the site full-time. However the fall in advertising income in 2006 means it can no longer cover his costs and living expenses.

'Early in the year, the Big 4 Organized Music gang turned on LimeWire, one of my advertisers,' Newton said. 'LimeWire pulled their booking, and then it was BearShare's turn. Two down,

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and I was in deep trouble. Again, I had to borrow money to stay online.'

Temporary respite came in the form of funding from an unnamed European source, but this was cut off at the end of December.

He says that he has tried to find other sources of revenue, including Google AdSense, but was banned for allegedly generating spurious clicks, an allegation he firmly denies. Nonetheless he insists that the site can still make money.

'P2pnet was never intended to be a business, but if it's to survive, clearly, it has to expand so it can at least break even, and this means advertising,' he said. 'If posts are sent to separate sections instead of one big archive, if there's someone around to look after the tech end and someone else to take care of advertising, it has a huge amount of potential.'

Newton is asking around $30,000 for the site, having turned down $25,000 in 2003, and hoping that the new owner will allow him to remain in the editor's chair. If not, he well sell outright to the highest bidder, but retain the existing content so that he can hand it over to 'some responsible person' for archiving.