Timeline of File Sharing

2000
January My.MP3.com is released by MP3.com. March Scour Exchange is released as a P2P file exchange service to compete with Napster. In addition to audio files, it also supports sharing of other media as well as software. March Gnutella becomes the first decentralized file sharing network with the release of a network client by Justin Frankel and Tom Pepper of Nullsoft. March Phex (formerly FURI) Gnutella client released. May UMG v. MP3.com causes My.MP3.com to shut down. June Slyck.com (originally Slyway.com) launches. July Freenet is created by Ian Clarke. Its goal is to provide freedom of speech through a peer-to-peer network which focuses on protecting anonymity. Files are distributed across the computers of Freenet's users. Ian Clarke's paper would become the most-cited computer science paper of 2000. Freenet would become a darknet in 2008. September eDonkey2000 client and server software is released by Jed McCaleb, introducing hashing into decentralized file sharing. October Scour Exchange is shut down as Scour Inc. files for bankruptcy in the face of copyright infringement litigation. October Napster is credited with driving Radiohead's Kid A album to the top of the Billboard charts.

2001

February A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc. February Napster peaks at 26.4 million users. March Kazaa and the FastTrack proprietary protocol are released by Niklas Zennstrm, Janus Friis, and Priit Kasesalu. The Kazaa Media Desktop client came bundled with malware. Legal action in the Netherlands would force an offshoring of the company, renamed Sharman Networks. In September 2003, the RIAA would file suit against private individuals allegedly sharing files via Kazaa. In September 2005, UMA v. Sharman would be ruled against Sharman by the Federal Court of Australia. Sharman's non-compliance would prompt censorship of the program in Australia. In June 2006, the MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. would cause Sharman to settle for $100 million and convert Kazaa to a legal-only file sharing program. April Morpheus is released by MusicCity (later StreamCast), after licensing the FastTrack protocol.[34][35] MusicCity had previously operated OpenNap servers. Morpheus would become a popular FastTrack client, with 4.5 million users, until licensing disputes and a protocol switch in February 2002. In March 2003, the Morpheus client was re-released to operate on Gnutella, using Gnucleus servant as its core. In June 2005, a redesigned Morpheus client would be released. In June 2006, MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. would be decided against StreamCast. In June 2008, the Morpheus client would become no longer available for download.

April gtk-gnutella client is released. July Napster shuts down due to injunction. July OpenNap servers spring up.[citation needed] July Audiogalaxy Satellite client reaches 1 million downloads.[citation needed] July 1 BitTorrent released by Bram Cohen. August ShareReactor eDonkey network index site founded. It would be taken down by police in March 2004. September LimeWire Gnutella client is released under open source. October Mutella client is released. By 2007, it would no longer be functional.[citation needed] November GNUnet is first publicly announced.[citation needed] November DC++ is created for the Direct Connect network and would become the most popular client.

2002

January JASRAC and RIAJ vs Yugen Kaisha Nippon MMO in Tokyo district court, causing File rogue( ) ordered to shut down on April 9 February The Kazaa protocol switch shuts out Morpheus. May eMule is released and soon[specify] becomes the eDonkey2000 network's most popular client[citation needed] May Audiogalaxy takes steps to block illegal files due to RIAA lawsuit. June Audiogalaxy settles RIAA suit for undisclosed amount, its file sharing becomes limited. June First release of Shareaza by Michael Stokes. June Applejuice released. July Overnet introduced by the creators of eDonkey2000 implementing Kademlia protocol. July Soribada() was closed on July 11 by Suwon District Court South Division. August P2Pnet is founded by Jon Newton. September Audiogalaxy discontinues P2P services. October Soulseek file sharing program released. October Suprnova.org torrent index goes online. November Gnutella2 protocol is announced.

2003

January isoHunt torrent index founded by Gary Fung. As of 2008, it serves over 40 million unique searches per month. March The Open Music Model is published, advocating a business model for the recording industry based on file sharing April Demonoid torrent index founded. As of 2008, it is the second-largest public torrent tracker in the world. May Poisoned is released. It is the first Kazaa client for the Mac OS X platform.[citation needed] May The iTunes Music Store is launched by Apple, selling music by individual tracks, with digital rights management to prevent file sharing September the RIAA begins filing lawsuits against individuals allegedly sharing files on Kazaa. September TorrentSpy is registered. It would be shut down in March 2008, and in May 2008 it would be ordered to pay the MPAA $110 million in damages. November Winny source code is confiscated by the Kyoto Police
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November 21 The Pirate Bay (TPB) bittorrent tracker is founded by Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij, and Peter Sunde. It is based in Sweden. It has remained active despite numerous legal actions and a police raid in May 2006. As of February 4, 2013, it is the 73rd most popular site on the Internet according to Alexa. 2003 eMule introduces the Kad network, which implements the Kademlia protocol.

2004

January 17 - The initial version of the Advanced Direct Connect protocol is introduced for the Direct Connect network. March 10 ShareReactor shut down by Swiss Police. May 10 Winny developer Isamu Kaneko is arrested for suspected conspiracy to commit copyright violation. June 1 Shareaza becomes open source with the release of v2.0 of the software. As of 2008, almost all of the major clients on its supported networks (gnutella, Gnutella2, eDonkey) are open source. October 28 The RIAA files an additional 750 lawsuits aimed at alleged copyright violations from file sharing. December 14 Suprnova and many other torrent indexes closed after cease and desist orders by MPAA. December 14 LokiTorrent refuses to comply with cease and desist orders, quickly gains 680,000 users, and $40,000 in legal fund donations. Its legitimacy would later be questioned and it would be taken over by MPAA in February 2005. 2005[edit source] January Mininova torrent index goes online as a successor to Suprnova. It has served 5 billion downloads as of May 2008 January eXeem goes online and rumored/adversed as "the revenge of suprnova". The program failed to gain popularity and was eventually abandoned months later. February LokiTorrent indexing service shut down and is taken over by MPAA. March Avalanche BitTorrent alternative proposed. Is criticized by BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen. March 21 Megaupload one-click hosting service is launched. June A busy CD music MP3 download site Boxup closed down and membership transfer to coxoo, then discontinued 2006/03. June Grokster developers are found guilty by the United States Supreme court of encouraging copyright infringement June 30 EzPeer[57] wins its case vs IFPI Taiwan in Shihlin district court. The high court would later reject an appeal, but ezPeer would settle with IPFI Taiwan. As of 2008, it is a legal music download service. September 5 UMA v. Sharman September 13 WinMX servers owned by Frontcode are shut down due to a cease and desist letter from the RIAA. Developer groups would set up new servers days later. September 9 Kuro() loses its case vs IFPI Taiwan in Taipei local court. It would also lose its case vs Push Sound Music & Entertainment on December 19, 2006.[60] Kuro would lose its appeal in the Taiwan high court on July 16, 2008. Chairman Chen Shou-ten (), CEO James Chen(), president Chen Kuo-hsiung(), and one of Kuro's 500,000 members Chen Chia-hui (), were sentenced to fine and jail.[61] It shut down its P2P services in 2006, and has become a legal music download service. September 28 MetaMachine Inc. discontinues the development and maintenance of the original eDonkey2000 client and of the Overnet network following a cease and desist letter from the RIAA.

November Bram Cohen, the author of the peer-to-peer (P2P) BitTorrent protocol and the BitTorrent program, made a deal with the MPAA to remove links to illegal content on the official BitTorrent website. The deal was with the seven largest studios in America. The agreement means the site will comply with procedures outlined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

2006

Pro-file sharing demonstration inSweden after the police raid against The Pirate Bay, 2006. February 21 Razorback2, a Swiss indexing server and one of the biggest on the eDonkey network, is raided and taken down.[64] May 31 The servers of the Swedish website The Pirate Bay are raided by 50 Swedish police officers, causing it to go offline for three days.[65] June 27 MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. is decided. October 10 RapidShare one-click hosting service was founded by Christian Schmid.

2007

August 21 Suprnova.org is relaunched by The Pirate Bay. October 12 RIAA files a lawsuit against Usenet.com, accusing it of being an illicit peer-to-peer file sharing site. October 23 OiNK's Pink Palace BitTorrent Tracker is raided and shut down by a joint effort between Dutch and British police. October 24 The civil-court jury trial for Capitol v. Thomas, the first lawsuit by major record labels against an alleged file sharer, concludes with a verdict for the plaintiffs and a statutory damage award of US$9,250 for each of 24 songs, for a total of $222,000. This was vacated due to an error in jury instruction, and a new trial was held in 2009. November 9 The Demonoid BitTorrent tracker shuts down until April 2008 citing legal threats by the CRIA. December 20 Shareaza.com, the homepage of Shareaza, is taken over by Discordia Ltd., a company closely related to the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America). It now distributes software containing spyware and adware.

2008

January 10 A trademark claiming the name Shareaza is filled by Discordia Ltd. March 24 TorrentSpy shuts down citing hostile legal climate. April 11 Demonoid comes back online. May 7 TorrentSpy is ordered to pay $110 million in damages by US court. May 8 Freenet Darknet rewrite is released. August 8 Italy prevents their citizens from accessing The Pirate Bay and forwards their traffic to IFPI instead. October 10 An appeal by The Pirate Bay's lawyers succeeds in lifting the Italian ban. October 29 Morpheus website taken down; client is no longer available. November 27 A Danish court rules that ISPs must block access to the website The Pirate Bay. December 16 ShareReactor is reopened by The Pirate Bay. December 19 The RIAA claims to have ended its P2P litigation campaign against individuals in the U.S., which had been losing money, in favor of a three strikes campaign. However, some new lawsuits continued to be filed

2009

Protestors demonstrating against The Pirate Bay trial on February 16, 2009. February 16 The Pirate Bay trial starts February 23 OneSwarm is released. April 17 The Pirate Bay trial concludes with a guilty verdict; each defendant is sentenced to one year in jail and a total of 30 million SEK (3.6 million USD, 2.7 million EUR) in fines and damages. The people behind The Pirate Bay declare they will appeal the ruling. April 24 Legal fees in record industry lawsuits cause SeeqPod to sell its technology; the site closes until it finds a buyer. June 15 In the retrial of the 2007 Capitol v. Thomas case, a jury again finds in favor of the plaintiffs, and awards statutory damages of $80,000 per song, for a total of $1.92 million. June 30 Swedish gaming company Global Gaming Factory says it has an interest in purchasing The Pirate Bay. Global Gaming factory eventually lose funding to do so. (GGF). September 14 Demonoid experiences hardware damage from power outages causing a three month downtime. September 30 Global Gaming Factory fails to produce the funds to purchase The Pirate Bay and the deal is put to an end. November 26 Mininova has removed torrents to all copyrighted content that it does not have official agreements for. December BtChina and about 530 other sites registered in China were closed down. December 13 Demonoid is back online.

2010s

In computer science terms, there have been few significant developments in the 2010s. The BitTorrent protocol and clients have become more stable, adopting UDP to defend against transmission problems related to TCP. IPv6 support increased with clients and trackers. So far no new file sharing protocols have been introduced, only patches to the existing protocols.

2010

October 26, 2010 US federal court judge Kimba Wood issued an injunction forcing LimeWire to prevent "the searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality, and/or all functionality" of its software (see Arista Records LLC v. Lime Group LLC).[92][93] As a result, LimeWire May 5, 2011 and newer have been disabled using a backdoor installed by the company. November 9, 2010 First release of a modified version of LimeWire Pro with all undesirable components removed (such as ad- and spyware, as well as dependencies to LimeWire LLC servers) under the name of "LimeWire Pirate Edition", enabling access to all advanced features of the professional version for free. November 26, 2010 The verdict in The Pirate Bay trial was announced. The appeal court shortened sentences of three of the defendants who appeared in court that day. Neij's sentence was reduced to 10 months, Sunde's to eight, and Lundstrm's to four. However, the fine was increased from 32 to 46 million kronor.

2011

March 2011 A case involving LimeWire is announced, with an attempt to sue the company for up to $75 trillion.
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June 2011 Malaysia government blocked 10 file sharing sites. 22 October 2011 Foxy (P2P) shut down.

2012

January 2012 The office of EX.UA was raided and service shut down. It was restored in February. February 2012 The domain names of the popular one-click hosting service Megaupload were seized and the site was shut down by the United States Department of Justice, following the indictment and arrests of the owners for allegedly operating as an organization dedicated tocopyright infringement. February 2012 Fileserve and Filesonic, both popular file-sharing sites voluntarily stop all sharing services, while another site, uploaded.to begins blocking all IP addresses from the US. February 2012 Btjunkie, one of the most popular BitTorrent sites voluntarily shuts down. June 2012 - FDzone in Hong Kong and Macau was shut down. August 2012 - Seized Demonoid BitTorrent sites up for sale. Filesonic, which previously disabled its sharing services following Megaupload's shutdown, goes completely offline.

2013

January 2013 - Mega, the successor to Megaupload, was launched from New Zealand. MUSTAFA MUTLU 05090000185