The Starfish and the Spider  The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations is a 2006 book by Ori Brafman (author of the 2010 book "Click: The Magic of Instant Connections") and Rod Beckstrom. It is an exploration of the implications of the rise of decentralized organizations such as Grokster and YouTube. The book contrasts them to centralized organizations, such as "Encyclopædia Britannica", using compendia of knowledge as examples. The spider and starfish analogy refers to the contrasting biological nature of the respective organisms, starfish having a decentralized neural structure permitting regeneration. In addition to giving historical examples of decentralized organizations such as Alcoholics Anonymous and the Apaches and analyzing their nature in contrast to centralized organizations, the book considers conflict between centralized and decentralized organizations, including the "If you can't beat them, join them" solution of creating hybrid organizations such as Citizendium. A chapter towards the end of the book explores the concept of the "sweet spot", the optimal mix of decentralized and centralized attributes. Don Verelli was an attorney who championed the effort for MGM to crack down on the peer-to-peer music website Grokster. But although the record labels won the lawsuits, other groups such as Kazaa, and eMule surfaced. The authors compare the record companies to "spiders" – organizations under the control of a central brain or leader – while the smaller organizations are more like "starfish" – if a limb is severed, the remaining parts are able to regenerate the entire body, resulting in two or more starfish. The spider organization is compared to the Aztec Empire which fell when Montezuma was defeated by Hernán Cortés and his Spanish army, but the starfish organization is compared to the Apaches, who decentralized and became nomadic, and which the Spanish army could not defeat. Dave Garrison of Netcom attempts to explain the Internet to executives in Paris, but is met with questions such as who would run the Internet. The authors look into the starfish Alcoholics Anonymous, which survives and thrives even away from the founder. They also look into the history of the music industry since the 19th century from live performers to recording on small labels to ownership from the big five record companies to Napster and other peer-to-peer networks. They list questions that determine whether an organization is more like a spider or a starfish. The authors discuss some founders of starfish organizations: Niklas Zennstrom and Skype; Craig Newmark and Craigslist.