File Sharing
Contents
History
The history of file sharing dates back to 1971 when the 8 inch floppy diskette invented by IBM. [1] It rapidly won its acceptance as a useful data storage medium. Floppy disks allowed users to transfer files from one drive to another drive. In 1990, the World Wide Web (WWW) was officially proposed. The WWW provided users with easy access to file sharing. Within the next year, the MP3 standard is introduced.[2] This was the turning point which ultimately lead to Digital Piracy. The first MP3 player was released in 1997 and it was called the MPMan F10. A year later the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was passed and was used as a weapon of piracy destruction and was greatly used in many legal actions against file sharing services[3]. In 1999 Shawn Fanning created Napster. Napster is an online music sharing software. A user could selectively download specific songs from users that had purchased CD’s and made them available to other users on Napster. Users were sharing each others music. This institutes deliberate copyright infringement and this brings about the legality of file sharing which is discussed below. Just two years after Napster was created, the music industry organized a copyright infringement suit against them. Napster was immediately shut down in 2001. That same year, BitTorrent and LimeWire were released. BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer communications protocol for file sharing. The most famous site is The Pirate Bay (TPB) which was released in 2003. TPB allows users to share electronic files. As of 2011, it has over 5 million registered users and hosts more than 3.5 million torrent files.[4] LimeWire is a free peer-to-peer file sharing software program. In 2010, LimeWire was forced shut down by recording companies, but the network still remains available in open source clients like Frostwire. In March of 2011, thirteen recording companies are attempting to sue LimeWire for $75 trillion. [5] It's clearly been a trend throughout the history of file sharing that legal matters arise and are attempted to be combated, but file sharing continues to be rampant in today's technological world.
Legality of File Sharing
File sharing is not necessarily illegal, but there's an active legal debate surrounding file sharing that has caused many lawsuits. Although, there are many artists that support open source file sharing and see it as a way to cheaply promote their music. Also, it's important to realize that file hosting services do not actively monitor the content being transferred by users. So, although the site itself is legal, the files (or music) being uploaded on the site may not be.
Ethics of File Sharing
There is an estimated 700 million copyright-infringed music files on the Internet. [will expand later]
File Hosting
Mediafire Megaupload Sendspace Rapidshare
Torrent Sites
Site comparison
The following table compares the features of various BitTorrent sites. It is by no means exhaustive. Alexa ranking is accurate as of 5 October 2010.
References
- ↑ Computer History Museum. Retrieved 2011-10-08.
- ↑ Timeline of file sharing. Retrieved 2011-10-08.
- ↑ Nistor, Codrut. File Sharing – History. PCTips3000. 2009-06-34. Retrieved 2011-10-08.
- ↑ The Pirate Bay. Retrieved 2011-10-08.
- ↑ Plafke, James. LimeWire is Being Sued for Up to $75 Trillion, Judge Thinks It’s “Absurd”. Geekosystem. 2011-05-23. Retrieved 2011-10-08.
- ↑ [1] at Alexa
- ↑ Anime Suki
- ↑ Anime Suki
- ↑ Anime Suki at Alexa
- ↑ Anirena
- ↑ Anirena at Alexa
- ↑ Baka BT at Alexa
- ↑ Bangla Torrents at Alexa
- ↑ Bite Nova at Alexa
- ↑ Bit Lite at Alexa
- ↑ Bit Soup at Alexa
- ↑ Bit Torrent at Alexa
- ↑ Wiki BitToxic
- ↑ Bit Toxic IRC Information
- ↑ Bit Toxic
- ↑ Bit Toxic RSS
- ↑ Bit Toxic at Alexa
- ↑ http://btdigg.org/about.html
- ↑ BTDigg at Alexa
- ↑ BT Junkie at Alexa
- ↑ BT Mon
- ↑ BT Mon at Alexa
- ↑ BT Scene at Alexa
- ↑ Bush Torrent at Alexa
- ↑ Cinema Torrents
- ↑ Cinema Torrents at Alexa
- ↑ Clear Bits at Alexa
- ↑ Demonid at Alexa
- ↑ Entertane at Alexa
- ↑ eTree at Alexa
- ↑ Extra Torrent at Alexa
- ↑ Fenopy at Alexa
- ↑ Flix Flux FAQ
- ↑ Flix Flux at Alexa
- ↑ Full DLs
- ↑ Full DLs at Alexa
- ↑ Games Torrents at Alexa
- ↑ Go Torrent at Alexa
- ↑ h33t at Alexa
- ↑ iBiblio at Alexa
- ↑ Imomortal Seed at Alexa
- ↑ IP Torrents at Alexa
- ↑ Kravitz, David · (Mar 2010) · [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/isohunt/ Isohunt Ordered to Remove Infringing Content] · work · Wired · 11-30-2011
- ↑ Yam, Marcus · (Apr 2010) · [http://www.tomshardware.com/news/isohunt-bittorrent- torrent-pirate-bay-mpaa,10053.html Isohunt Ordered to Take Down Illegal Torrents] · work · Toms Hardware · 11-30-2011
- ↑ RSS Search Feeds at ISO Hunt
- ↑ ISO Hunt at Alexa
- ↑ Jishaku Toshokan at Alexa
- ↑ JPopsuki at Alexa
- ↑ KickassTorrents at Alexa
- ↑ Legit Torrents at Alexa
- ↑ Linux Tracker at Alexa
- ↑ MegaShara at Alexa
- ↑ FAQ RSS at MiniNova
- ↑ MiniNova at Alexa
- ↑ Mo Nova at Alexa
- ↑ New Torrents at Alexa
- ↑ Now Torrents at Alexa
- ↑ Nyaa Torrents at Alexa
- ↑ Open Bit Torrent at Alexa
- ↑ PickTorrent at Alexa
- ↑ Plenty of Torrents at Alexa
- ↑ Public BT at Alexa
- ↑ qTorrents at Alexa
- ↑ Rapid Treggy at Alexa
- ↑ Rarbq at Alexa
- ↑ RU Tracker at Alexa
- ↑ Scary Water at Alexa
- ↑ Scrape Torrent at Alexa
- ↑ Seed Peer at Alexa
- ↑ Smaragd Torrent
- ↑ Smaragd Torrent at Alexa
- ↑ SumoTorrent at Alexa
- ↑ Share Reactor at Alexa
- ↑ Pirate Bay Tracker Shuts Down for Good at Torrent Freak
- ↑ Pirate Bay
- ↑ Pirate Bay at Alexa
- ↑ Tokyo Toshokan at Alexa
- ↑ Toorgle at Alexa
- ↑ Torrent Crazy at Alexa
- ↑ Torrent Finder at Alexa
- ↑ Torrentech at Alexa
- ↑ Torrent Funk at Alexa
- ↑ Torrent Pond at Alexa
- ↑ Torrent Portal at Alexa
- ↑ Torrent Reactor
- ↑ Torrent Reactor at Alexa
- ↑ Torrent Reactor.to
- ↑ Torrent Reactor at Alexa
- ↑ Torrent Root at Alexa
- ↑ Torrent Scan at Alexa
- ↑ Torrent Tree at Alexa
- ↑ Torrentz at Alexa
- ↑ Yesterday at Torrent Zap
- ↑ RSS at Bit Toxic
- ↑ Torrent Zap at Alexa
- ↑ U Sniff at Alexa
- ↑ Vertor at Alexa
- ↑ Wi Torrent at Alexa
- ↑ Your Bit Torrent at Alexa
- ↑ Zoozle at Alexa