In the case of Napster, an online service provider could not use the "transitory network transmission" safe harbor in the DMCA if they had control of the network with a server. It is generally credited as being the first peer-to-peer file sharing system. In June 1999, Napster was released as a centralized unstructured peer-to-peer system, requiring a central server for indexing and peer discovery. MP3.com offered music by unsigned artists, and grew to serve 4 million audio downloads daily. In 1998, MP3.com and Audiogalaxy were established, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was unanimously passed, and the first mp3 player devices were launched. The mp3 encoding, which was standardized in 1991 and which substantially reduced the size of audio files, grew to widespread use in the late 1990s. Internet Relay Chat (1988) and Hotline (1997) enabled users to communicate remotely through chat and to exchange files. Computers were able to access remote files using filesystem mounting, bulletin board systems (1978), Usenet (1979), and FTP servers (1985).
#Online file sharing software manual
Common methods of storage, transmission, and distribution used in file sharing include manual sharing using removable media, centralized servers on computer networks, World Wide Web-based hyperlinked documents, and the use of distributed peer-to-peer networking (see peer-to-peer file sharing).įiles were first exchanged on removable media.
It may be implemented through a variety of ways. Part of a series onįile sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images, and video), documents, or electronic books. For printer and file sharing as local area network service, see shared resource. This article is about file sharing over the Internet.