Free Peers, Inc. is being sued by the RIAA for copyright infringment under the claim that BearShare is a Napster clone.
Vincent Falco, leading developer of BearShare and owner of Free Peers, Inc. has gained a bad reputation for starting several flame wars in the GDF and for adding a security feature to his client that would ban all non-BearShare servents on activation. Although many other members of the GDF felt that it contradicted the "spirit of Gnutella", Vinnie Falco is still a very valuable member of the GDF for all the useful ideas he and his team added to the Gnutella protocol.