I2hub was founded by Wayne Chang, a former executive at Napster Inc., which launched the music-swapping revolution before the entertainment industry forced it to shut down.

Yesterday, Chang said I2hub is similar to AOL Instant Messenger or Internet Relay Chat communications programs in that it permits an exchange of data between users: "We do not host any offending files on our servers," Chang said, "nor do we have an index of files."

I2hub is much faster than the Internet:

Songs can be downloaded on Internet2 in 20 seconds, Sherman said, with movies taking less than five minutes. This marks a significant speed advantage over the Web, Sherman said, where it can take one to two minutes to download a song and well over an hour for a movie.

As for the schools, they include, according to the Post and the LA Times:

the University of California, San Diego, and the University of California, Berkeley, Boston University, Harvard University, Ohio State University, University of Southern California and Michigan State University, among others.

Who is Wayne Chang?

Curiously, the LA Times describes Wayne Chang's role at Napster a little differently than the Post:

The i2hub program is the brainchild of Michael Chang, on leave from the University of Massachusetts. ....The program is reminiscent of the original Napster, in which Chang played a minor role while he was a high school student. Among other voluntary contributions, Chang developed a way for users to circumvent the anti-piracy filters Napster added after a federal judge's order.

So, was Chang an executive or a bit player? Here's his bio from IHub2. Then there's this news article, which says Wayne Chang is 21 years old and a college sophomore at UMass.

And this article which says Chang was "the administrator of the message board for Napster" and decided to take a year off before college to start a job in Chicago that was going to pay him $70,000. a year. His parents own the China Blossom restaurant in North Andover, MA.

He sounds like one smart kid. I hope he saved something for legal fees.

More on IHub2 here.