History of P2P applications

The history of P2P applications is the description of the creation and development of P2P computer programs and networks; in addition to the associated concepts.

The beginning

The first P2P (Peer-to-peer) application was Hotline Connect, developed in 1996 for the Mac OS operating system by the young Australian programmer Adam Hinkley ^{[citation required]}. Hotline Connect, distributed by Hotline Communications, was intended to be a file-sharing platform for businesses and universities, but soon became a file-sharing platform of almost any kind, including illegal or pornographic content. However, distribution-free content files could also be shared. The Hotline Connect system was decentralized, since it did not use central servers, but completely autonomous: the files were stored on the computers of the users who wanted to function as servers, and they allowed, restricted or conditioned the entry of the rest of the users, the clients. In the event of a server going down, there was nowhere else to continue downloading that same file, and there was no choice but to cancel the download and start over on another server.

This system, well thought out in which each user depended on a single server, soon became obsolete. On the other hand, being an application developed mainly for a minority platform like Mac OS, it did not attract the attention of the generalist press. This changed with the birth of Napster in 1999^{[citation needed]}, to whom the invention of P2P is often mistakenly attributed. Although file transfers took place directly between two computers, Napster used central servers to store the list of computers and the files each provided, so it wasn't a perfectly P2P application. Although there were already applications that allowed the exchange of files between users, such as IRC and Usenet, Napster was presented as the first application for PC specialized in mp3 music files.

The result was a system that featured a large selection of music to download for free. The fact that Napster was a centralized service proved its undoing. In December 1999, several US record companies sued Napster, and well-known musicians such as Lars Ulrich, drummer of the Metallica group, demanded its closure^{[citation required]}. The lawsuit, far from frightening users, publicized the service, so that in February 2001 Napster had reached its peak with 13.6 million users worldwide^{[citation needed]}.

Many argued that the closure of Napster would only lead to the rise of other similar file-sharing applications^{[citation needed]}. The judge ordered the closure of Napster in July 2001^{[citation needed]}. After that date, Napster became a paid service^{[citation needed]}, at the cost of being practically forgotten by the Internet community.

For a while, file sharing was adrift. There were already enough alternatives. At first, Napster was still used through unofficial servers (using OpenNap, for example) that could be accessed thanks to a program called Napigator^{[citation required]}. Programs like Winmx (shut down in 2005 due to RIAA threats), and iMesh^{[citation needed]} also emerged.

Then Audiogalaxy^{[citation needed]}, another centralized music-sharing application, was established as the leader P2P, which was also terminated by court order. On the other hand, the RIAA (the American record label association) took these judicial decisions^{[citation needed]} as important victories aimed at ending the so-called "piracy" 3. 4;.

The path to the present

Breaking down centralized networks was relatively easy, simply shutting down the server that stores user lists and shared files. But after the closure of each server, other more modern applications emerged, and a particularly great achievement was the creation of decentralized networks, which do not depend on a central server, and therefore have no record of the files exchanged..

New clients and the appearance of the Gnutella network^{[citation needed]} gradually replaced Napster and Audiogalaxy, among others. Then, in 2002, there was a massive exodus of users to decentralized networks, such as Kazaa, Grokster, Piolet, and Morpheus^{[citation needed]}. There are also Ares and Ares Lite, free of spyware and using the Ares Galaxy network.

The RIAA tried, also through the courts, to end the new decentralized services, which allowed sharing various types of files (not just mp3), but Grokster and Morpheus won their lawsuits in April of 2003^{[citation required]}.

Then eDonkey 2000 came along (it already existed in 2001 but wasn't popular)^{[citation needed]}, this application that stood by Kazaa as the leader of the P2P movement. Later, the appearance of other clients based on the eDonkey 2000 protocol, such as Lphant, Shareaza, eMule and its Mods, and other lesser-known ones such as aMule and MLDonkey for Linux, caused the progressive decline of the original eDonkey 2000 program. stopped using it because it was replaced by eMule and its Mods.

Another important step was marked by the BitTorrent protocol, which despite having many similarities with eDonkey 2000 provides, according to the developers, a higher download speed, but at the cost of less variety and longevity of files on the network ^{[citation required]}.

Other important milestones have been the use of Kademlia and the Webcache^{[citation required]}.

Reality, legality and service of P2P Networks

Contrary to what is often said about these networks, they are a suitable instrument for distributing or sharing unpublished material to whoever you want: if I take a photograph and I like how it turned out, I have the freedom to share it with whoever wants to download it, It is a way of exchanging files similar to the exchange in messengers (messengers), only that it is given to anyone. It does not necessarily have to be a work created by a record company, as one would like to think. On the other hand, not all content is copyrighted or copyrighted.

There are contents (text, audio, video, software, image, etc.) with a free license that can be downloaded, distributed, shared, modified, these are those that use some of the following licenses (legally established):

• GNU License
• Creative Commons License
• Copyleft license,

Which allow (and even more encourage) the free distribution of content of one's own work. The works created by artists or users under these licenses are made to be shared with anyone, the more the better, and P2P networks are one of the best instruments for this.

Any attempt to legally block P2P networks is a clear violation of the right and freedoms that citizens possess to be able to do whatever they want with a work created by themselves, which does not have to have a license to be able to be shared.

Laws, convictions and actions against downloads via P2P

The RIAA, SGAE, MPA and others have not only chosen to sue the creators of file-sharing programs, but have also taken some actions against their users. In September 2003, the RIAA sued 261 Internet users for illegally copying music under its law. It was particularly controversial that, among those 261 Internet users, there was a 12-year-old girl [1], who ended up being sentenced to pay $2,000 for sharing close to a thousand songs. There have also been legal actions against websites that store and search elinks, torrents, NZB files (for newsgroups) and other P2P links.

The use of fake servers has also been implemented. A fake server is characterized by the fact that it is not really dedicated to acting as a server for the eDonkey 2000 network, but tries to obtain information from the clients that connect to it (for possible later lawsuits) or contaminate the network with false, corrupted elinks., or just full of garbage. As an example, it is worth mentioning the Razorback 2.2, 2.3,..., 2.6 servers, which appeared "one good day" in the heat of the success of Razorback 2.0 and 2.1.

In 2006, the real Razorback 2.0 and 2.1 servers were shut down due to legal action by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) [2]. Razorback 2 was the largest server in the eDonkey 2000 P2P network, hosting 3 million daily users, and handling over 1.3 million connections simultaneously, indexing over 170 million files; currently those responsible for Razorback 2 are preparing to reopen the server. However, despite the closure of these servers, it only succeeded in moving users to other servers on the eDonkey 2000 network, and the Kademlia network became much more widely known.

On September 12, 2006, MetaMachine, the company that owns eDonkey, agreed with the RIAA to pay a $30 million fine in an out-of-court settlement, to avoid potential lawsuits from the recording industry; Because of this, a notice was placed on the eDonkey website informing about the illegality of sharing copyrighted music and videos. Likewise, the client program, eDonkey 2000 stopped working, displaying this same message and starting its uninstallation automatically. However, the eDonkey 2000 network could not be shut down, and it continues to function today due to other programs such as eMule, MLDonkey, etc.

Regarding the BitTorrent protocol, there have also been some actions against this protocol. In 2006, at the end of March, TorrentPluribrain, a torrent search engine for the desktop created by Fernando Saiz, had to stop the activity of its servers due to a complaint filed on behalf of the Société Civile des Producteurs Phonographiques de Paris since despite Because its developer is Spanish, the servers were located in France.

So throughout history, lawsuits have only led regular users to switch to P2P programs with harder-to-stop technologies, and the number of users hasn't diminished. In addition, the number of applications to download music based on P2P, have not stopped increasing.