File Sharing

Peer-to-peer file sharing is an exciting (if you forgive me to use this much-abused word), still fairly new way to use the internet. Users sign up for the service; decide to share some folders on their computer with the other members; and start to look around what the others have to offer.

My personal experience with it is still fairly limited. I signed up with napster some time early in 2000, watched it grow, downloaded my share, but never signed up for anything else after it was shut.

But there are lots of other services around, most on a technically different basis (Napster relied on a few central servers and was therefore vulnerable), and file sharing has long ceased to be a mere mp3 phenomenon.

infoAnarchy.org has useful information about peer2peer networking systems.
Gnutelliums is a comprehensive directory of Gnutella clients for Windows, Linux/Unix, Java, and Macintosh
Revenge of the File-Sharing Masses, an article on Salon.com. You will find links to most of the Napster alternatives in the second part. Of course, since this article is from July 2001, it might be outdated in some aspects. But in any case it is interesting to read.
Shawn Fannings testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee is interesting to read if you want to know about the origins of Napster.
Limewire and
Bearshare were among the first Napster replacements.
Overnet/eDonkey and
Kazaa enjoy great popularity now. There were some spyware issues with the latter, I'm not sure whether they have been laid by by now.
OpenNap is an open source Napster server, but with Napster more or less out of business, it might not have much future.
Madster is a filesharing software, it is also a club (monthly membership fee $4.95), whether or not you have to be member of the club to be able to use the software is not quite clear. It was originally called Aimster, but had to drop this name because of some AOL trademark.
Naughty Nabster is a file sharing service for adult files. It had to come. I have the strong impression that this is not a free service, but couldn't find out what it costs.

Napster itself reemerged in 2003 as a for-pay service. It is strongly backed by Microsoft (Napster To Go, where you rent music instead of buying it, works only with Windows XP) as a sort of weapon against Apple's iTunes.

Last modified 2005-02-15