SonsOfLiberty
12-22-2009, 12:23 AM
Another 10 years have come and gone. This time 10 years ago, Napster was well on its way to making history. 10 years later, BitTorrent is the file-sharing mechanism of choice, but it's been a long road since Napster's early days. Looking back at the burgeoning revolution taking place in 1999, can we say there is anything around today with greater or equal aspirations?
First Napster Injunction - July 2000
The worlds separated by the time before and after Napster are polar opposites. If you remember how the Internet was before Napster’s launch in 1999, you’ll remember that finding music wasn’t very convenient. Remember AltaVista’s MP3 search? What about Lycos’ MP3 search? They actually weren’t too bad, but for most people, file-sharing wasn’t in the Internet vernacular just yet.
But there was a storm brewing in IRC, where searchable P2P networking had been thriving well before the arrival of Napster. The problem was, however, there simply weren’t enough people populating IRC to be a convenient avenue for distribution – primary because file-sharing on IRC was too difficult to use for average user.
Shawn Fanning was at the right place at the right time. The critical mass of necessary MP3 files and demand met at a special moment in Internet history, and Napster was an overnight success. Within a year, Napster was an irresistible avenue of MP3 distribution and a household name. During Napster’s rise, several other smaller P2P networks and protocols were quietly lurking in the distance.
In July 2000, the music industry was granted a temporary injunction order against Napster which threatened to shut down the network. That moment was truly one of the most defining events in file-sharing history. Although the order was stayed two day later, immediately following this news people began flooding other networks like Gnutella, OpenNap, Scour and iMesh. It showed that Napster wasn’t the end all and be of file-sharing, and more importantly, that it was impossible to rebottle the desire for digital music.
RIAA Lawsuit Campaign Begins - June 2003
Oh no it’s the RIAA lawsuits. The problem with shutting down Napster was that it didn’t fulfill its intended purpose: it didn’t return people to buying CDs, and it didn’t kill the P2P community. If anything it made heightened awareness and left people wondering what the next big thing would be.
As it turned out, FastTrack would become one of the many P2P networks of impressive size. Led by the Kazaa P2P application, FastTrack grew at a phenomenal clip, reaching a peak of around 4.5 million simultaneous users at any given time by June of 2003.
FastTrack was a prime target by the music industry because of its mainstream appeal, and also because it was considerably larger than Napster. In June 2003, the RIAA announced that it would initiate monetary demands from individuals suspected of distributing music via the FastTrack network. The lawsuit campaign resulted in an astounding 30,000 individuals being targeted – most of whom decided to settle for about $3,000 dollars. But there were a few hold outs, and some challenged the RIAA in court.
The most famous hold out was Jammie Thomas, the first consumer related legal victory for the music industry, who was eventually ordered to pay over $1.9 million dollars. Even those who were eventually absolved of any wrong doing by the courts still wound up investing years of their life to a campaign that at best was brutal. The music industry declared victory and quit the large scale lawsuit business in 2008.
The real result of the lawsuits wasn’t the annihilation of P2P networking. At the start of the lawsuit campaign, FastTrack was already in trouble. It was large, true enough, but it wasn’t an optimal mechanism for distributing large files, or for verifying the authenticity of files. People were already looking for something better, and thanks to the legal action of the music industry, their legal action hastened the transition to eDonkey2000 and more importantly, BitTorrent.
ShareReactor Shuts Down – March 2004
There’s a lot of technology that makes up the ED2K community. We already know about the servers, the protocols, and the clients that make up the infrastructure. But there’s an extensive community that puts all the pieces together. Two of the most significant communities in ED2K’s past were the indexing site ShareReactor, and the server network Razorback2.
The story of ShareReactor, as told by ED2K lore, began with a young lady named Geraldine, also known online as “Gowenna”. The site originally began as Gowenna.da.ru, however, as the site became more popular and more demand was placed on the servers, the site’s functionality and purpose was switched over to ShareReactor.com. In January of 2002, the site reported that Gowenna died in a car accident. One of the administrators, “Simon Moon” took over the site. Although the original administrator was no longer part of the community, ShareReactor.com would become the largest ED2K indexing site and perhaps the largest ED2K community.
Much like SuprNova was synonymous with BitTorrent, ShareReactor was an integral part of ED2K. Very few people used the search feature within eDonkey or eMule. Although the occasional pearl indeed could be found via the search feature, a search for “A Great Movie” may yield something never intended, such as malicious software. ShareReactor virtually eliminated this threat. Only verified links known to direct the user to valid files were posted. A team of moderators coupled with an extensive user comments and ratings helped fortify the system.
The ShareReactor forums, in addition to their index, were also well known resources for verified ED2K links. As ShareReactor became more popular, scrutiny of its potential copyright infringing behavior mounted. During its peak in March of 2004, the site suddenly went down without explanation. On March 12, a notice was posted to the site partially explaining the circumstance. (See: http://www.slyck.com/story424_ShareReactor_Down_Indefinitely)
"MAINPAGE & FORUM WILL MOST LIKELY NOT BE BACK UP, PLEASE DO NOT ASK WHY, WE WILL TELL YOU WHEN WE KNOW MORE!"
It would be revealed on March 16 that Swedish authorities acted on the behest of the Swiss Anti-Piracy-Federation (SAFE). Simon was initially held and questioned by the police, and then driven to his home where it was raided for evidence. The Swedish authorities seized the servers that hosted ShareReactor, including Simon Moon’s personal computers. From an AfterDawn interview (see: http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/simon_moon_interview_page_4.cfm)
“Taken was a whole lot; two ShareReactor servers, my private machine and my girlfriend's private machine, my folder with all bank files, although [I] gave them a copy of all my bank activities of the last 4 years already. Also all my backups went with them. At the end SR was down and [I] had none of my data left, personal and otherwise.”
Considering that ED2K was the biggest network for distributing large files at the time, news of this event reverberated throughout the community. Many other ED2K sites went offline in its wake, including the statistical site Jingle and ACFmovies.com (Asia Cinema Forums). ShareReactor had 225,000 registered members, and many times more that number of transient visitors. Smaller communities swelled with ShareReactor refuges desperately seeking ED2K links. In response, these smaller communities such as ShareConnector would soon become leading ED2K indexing sites.
Subsequent revivals of ShareReactor never recaptured its former glory. Attempted comebacks had the benefit of the ShareReactor name, but much like the reincarnated Napster, there’s no going back. The technological landscape turned irreversibly in BitTorrent’s favor, and the only way to make ShareReactor (thanks to being propped up by The Pirate Bay) even noticeably relevant was by indexing .torrent files.
Suprnova Forced Offline – December 2004
BitTorrent’s rise to popularity was helped by an indexing site called SuprNova.org that first appeared on the file-sharing landscape in late 2002. SuprNova was started by an individual named Andrej Preston, who also went by the moniker Sloncek (Slovenian for “little elephant”). Inspired by the absence of BitTorrent sites, a fondness for “Star Trek and stuff like that” and an appreciation for BitTorrent technology, SuprNova.org was born. Sloncek originally considered “SuperNova” as the site’s name; however, the domain was already taken. Instead, the name SuprNova would become the Universal BitTorrent Resource. Sloncek would later reflect that he preferred this name anyway, as it was also the name of his Linux box and felt it made the site more “special”.
Like many websites, SuprNova started with only several thousand users. SuprNova’s origins were modest, using a Linux box and a home broadband connection with an upload capacity of only 16 kb/second. Sloncek also went through the painstaking processes of adding each .torrent manually. His efforts paid off, as within a year, the site’s popularity exploded, requiring a network of mirror sites to accommodate the traffic. (See: http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1177)
“The site gained a reputation of completeness and integrity. Thousands of people submitted tens of thousands of torrent files. The fakes were all weeded out by a group of only 20 moderators. Their job was made easier with unmoderated submitters, who had gained the trust of the moderators, so could publish torrents directly to the front page.”
It was clear by 2004 that BitTorrent was the P2P protocol of choice, thanks in part to the exceptional .torrent database of SuprNova. In an attempt to stem the demand for TV shows and movies, the MPAA launched a multi-pronged legal assault against the BitTorrent community in the pre-Christmas months of 2004. One by one, most of the major communities, including Youceff Torrents, Phoenix Torrents and SuprNova, would fall as a result of this organized attack.
The global assault on the BitTorrent community would ultimately prove to have more bark than bite. From a public relations perspective, it achieved widespread publicity and furthered the entertainment industry’s anti-piracy message. From a technological perspective, it simply weeded out older communities in exchange for more advanced ones. SuprNova had already been in a state of decline by late 2004, at least from a technological perspective.
SuprNova’s index would close in December of 2004. Details surrounding that closure, however, would not come to light until nearly a year later. In November of 2004, Sloncek received a call from his ISP informing him that Slovenian authorities raided SuprNova’s main server farm. Although the servers were confiscated, Sloncek managed to quickly transfer SuperNova’s functionality to a Dutch web host. However, the growing pressure on Sloncek proved too much, and on December 19, he shut the site down for good, dealing a major psychological blow to the file-sharing community. But the story didn’t end there.
A few weeks prior the fall of SuprNova, excitement began to build over Sloncek’s involvement in new project called eXeem, a decentralized BitTorrent alternative that the RIAA or MPAA would be unable to take down because it would not have a central server. Instead of centralized trackers, eXeem would randomly designate users with adequate bandwidth and fast computers as nodes, which would coordinate file transfers and help users find peers. Swarming technology would still govern file transfers. As an added bonus, eXeem would be searchable. By December 1, the network already had 5,000 SuprNova beta testers. Had Sloncek discovered a way to eliminate the Achilles heel of the BitTorrent community? Not quite.
eXeem was owned by a company named Swarm Systems, Inc., which was located (at least on paper) in the Caribbean nation of St. Kitts and Nevis. Sloncek’s role was to promote the new project and act as the spokesperson, which should’ve been easy considering the popularity of SuperNova. However, things turned sour when Sloncek released details about eXeem’s functionality on a December 30th NovaStream radio interview. Particulars were sparse, but there was one stunning detail – it would be bundled with Cydoor, a piece of third party software that had a poor reputation in the P2P community.
Early versions of Cydoor were considered malicious and potentially damaging to the end user’s machine. The inclusion of Cydoor, coupled with scant details surrounding SuprNova’s closure, were enough to derail eXeem. Many former users exhibited fear and anger towards Sloncek, as his decision to use SuprNova’s good name to push eXeem – and in effect Cydoor - was highly unpopular.
Released just about one month after SuprNova’s fall, eXeem was quickly dismissed, with some in the community referring to it as “Kazaa jr.” Any comparison with Kazaa is considered an insult in the P2P community, especially since past versions of Kazaa contained Cydoor. It didn’t matter how great Suprnova once was or the potential eXeem had; the cast was set and the comparison to Kazaa sealed the fate of this doomed project.
eXeem aside, SuprNova and Sloncek’s contribution to the BitTorrent community are considered immeasurable by many file-sharers. SuprNova set the stage for what a BitTorrent experience should be, and set an example for future communities. Luckily for Sloncek, the prosecutor’s office dropped the matter and his computers and equipment were returned in October of 2005. He would later donate the SuprNova.org domain to The Pirate Bay, which then resurrected the site in 2007 – but is now a mere shadow of its former magnificence.
EliteTorrents and the Revenge of the Sith – May 2005
As the BitTorrent world crumbled around them, EliteTorrents, run by Scott McCausland, Grant Stanley, and Daniel Dove, remained online. EliteTorrents was a private and rather exclusive community. Access was only permitted to registered users of the site, and this was strictly enforced. Launched in 2003, EliteTorrents quickly gathered a user base of approximately 130,000 users by 2005. While this number is small compared to The Pirate Bay, it would soon gain widespread notoriety.
EliteTorrents was significant for two reasons: it was the last major US based BitTorrent community, and was the one responsible for prereleasing “Star Wars, Episode III, Revenge of the Sith” (ROTS) several hours prior to its May 19, 2005, theatrical release. The administrators of EliteTorrents are US citizens, the web server was US based, and the tracker was hosted in the Netherlands.
Two weeks prior to the May 2005 release of “Star Wars, Episode III, Revenge of the Sith” (ROTS), all was quiet on the Internet front. There were no signs that ROTS had been leaked – it would seem that heightened security, especially in the wake of previous prereleases, had paid off. Studios had invested millions on security measures to prevent screeners, which are near DVD quality films designed for critics to review, from leaking online. Despite these enhancements, file-sharers, journalists and bloggers everywhere were still anxiously waiting for the inevitable, and sure enough, 6 hours prior to the May 19th theatrical release of ROTS, EliteTorrents was tracking a .torrent of this highly anticipated prequel. Once it appeared on EliteTorrents, it spread throughout the Internet.
The quality of ROTS was exceptional; it was a “work print”, or an unfinished copy, that still had an unobtrusive counter in the center top of the video. Once this film came into the possession of the EliteTorrents administration, the temptation to share it proved irresistible. Scott McClauland uploaded the movie, a move that would prove fatal for EliteTorrents. As Scott McClausland later explained, the desire to be the best overcame good judgment.
“It was the fact that we had to keep going. We were on track to become the best BT tracker. And I believe that no site around now, or then, matches us at all. The legal actions were just par for the course. [It’s] not like we didn't know what we were doing.”
EliteTorrents was able to hold on a bit longer than their brethren, but the moment Star Wars was prereleased, all hell broke loose. On May 25, 2005, less than a week after the upload, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched Operation D-Elite, which forced the private EliteTorrents community offline.
Initially, the shutdown of EliteTorrents appeared as a hoax, or perhaps a hacker had manipulated the site. There were several reasons to suspect a hoax rather than government law enforcement involvement; the takedown notice was rather unimpressive, a strange set of characters “RTJKAS” appeared when the site was highlighted, and the site’s Dutch based trackers remained operational – only the website server was offline. But within a day, it was evident that the FBI and ICE had directly forced the site offline – a first in the P2P community.
"This morning, agents of the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed 10 search warrants across the United States against leading members of a technologically sophisticated P2P network known as Elite Torrents. Employing technology known as BitTorrent, the Elite Torrents network attracted more than 133,000 members and, in the last four months, allegedly facilitated the illegal distribution of more than 17,800 titles-including movies and software-which were downloaded 2.1 million times.
The fallout from this event was far reaching. Never again would a US based tracker rise to such prominence, and the legal repercussions on the administration were staggering. Scott McCausland and Grant Stanley both pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and one count of copyright infringement. Both received 5 months in prison, followed by 5 months of home detention. McCausland also received 2 years probation, while Stanley received 3 years probation, with an additional $3,000 dollar fine.
MGM vs Grokster Decision - June 2005
The situation began in October of 2001 when the RIAA and MPAA filed suit against Grokster and StreamCast (then MusicCity.) Both organizations had been successful in shutting down centralized networks such as Napaster and Scour. However, this round of lawsuits would prove more challenging as the fundamental difference in network architecture would prove to be the turning point for StreamCast and Grokster.
Unlike Napster or Scour, which used centralized indexing servers to catalog files on their networks, StreamCast and Grokster are considered “decentralized.” Decentralized networks do not have direct control of their network’s indexing responsibilities. Instead, this responsibility is distributed throughout the clients residing on the network.
After churning slowly through the courts, in April of 2003, Justice Steven Wilcox ruled in favor of StreamCast and Grokster. His ruling, based on the 1983 Sony vs. Universal decision (AKA the BetaMax case), stated that SreamCast and Grokster were not responsible for the content of their networks.
The MPAA and RIAA immediately appealed to the United States Federal Court of Appeals in California. Arguments were heard in February of 2004, in which the defense made a brilliant argument against the copyright industry. To no one's surprise, the court ruled in April 2004 that StreamCast and Grokster were not guilty of copyright infringement.
"This appeal presents the question of whether distributors of peer-to-peer file-sharing computer networking software may be held contributory or vicariously liable for copyright infringements by users," Justice Sidney R. Thomas wrote. "Under the circumstances presented by this case, we conclude that the defendants are not liable for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement and affirm the district court’s partial grant of summary judgment."
The case made its way to the Supreme Court, where the previous success of the P2P industry hit a brick wall. In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court disagreed with the previous rulings and remanded the case to the lower courts. This didn’t hand the entertainment industry an absolute victory, but it gave the entertainment industry the power to continue their lawsuit in the lower courts. It also introduced another dimension to the copyright debate: inducing copyright infringement. Unfortunately, none of the issues regarding P2P development legality were answered, as Grokster settled in November 2005 and StreamCast Networks filed for bankruptcy in 2008.
WinMX Disappears – September 2005
No P2P story would be complete without talking about WinMX. Since nearly the beginning of modern P2P history, WinMX has been along for the ride. Unlike most P2P communities though, community interest in this network was nearly unparalleled. WinMX started as an OpenNap network, but thanks to the efforts of the RIAA, OpenNap’s resourcefulness as a mainstream Napster alternative was quickly negated.
On May 18, 2001, FrontCode released an answer to the decline of OpenNap. WinMX 2.6 was released, and ushered in with it a new era of file-sharing. Unlike its predecessors, WinMX 2.6 was no longer just a simple OpenNap client as it established its own decentralized P2P network. Dubbed the WinMX PNP (Peer Networking Protocol) Network, its architecture took advantage of the growing decentralized movement. Its networking architecture was decentralized like Gnutella, however took advantage of supernodes for increased network efficiency. WinMX’s population exploded soon after, and became a favorite in the P2P community.
In an interview with Kevin Hearn on March 30, 2002, WinMX’s population had reached nearly 1 million simultaneous users. FrontCode president Kevin Hearn:
“On Monday, I finally put our recent hardware upgrades to work and put a trace into our system to measure unique IP levels in our v2.6 peer caches. The lowest day this week (Wednesday) there were ~2.1 million unique IPs that used any of our v2.6 caches. On the highest day (Friday), we measured 2.7M unique IPs. Based on these numbers, I would conservatively estimate our daily simultaneously connected client peak at about 1 million. Because we only know when a user gets on the network, and not when they exit, converting the daily unique count into a peak population count is a bit sketchy at best.”
There was never a problem with attracting users to the WinMX network – WinMX’s resourcefulness was able to sell itself. The big problem with WinMX was the pace of development. WinMX 4.0 was a highly anticipated release, which unfortunately for users, never occurred. The reasoning behind this is unknown, and Slyck questioned Kevin Hearn several times regarding the expected release time. 2003, 2004, and 2005 would come and go, with little in the way of version releases, save for a few minor updates. Development came to an end after the release of version 3.54, as September 2005 would set the final nail in WinMX’s coffin.
On September 13, 2005, FrontCode Technologies was the suspected recipient of a cease and desist letter from the RIAA. The RIAA letter demanded that FrontCode immediately stop the encouragement of copyright infringement on its network. Several days later on September 21, 2005, shocked members of this network found them unable to connect. FrontCode complied by taking the WinMX domain down, along with the critical host cache server.
The WinMX PNP community still exists to some extent, as committed users have been able to prop this old network back up. But WinMX’s greatest chance of success was superseded by BitTorrent, and the greatness that 4.0 may have bestowed is now just a historical footnote.
Bram Cohen & the MPAA – November 2005
The creation of BitTorrent, Inc. was seen as the transformation of the BitTorrent protocol from an underground piracy haven to a legitimate company. Furthering the legitimacy of BitTorrent was a historical “Memorandum of Understanding” between BitTorrent, Inc., and the MPAA. Never in the history of file-sharing had an entertainment industry trade group made peace with a P2P developer.
As part of this agreement, BitTorrent agreed to disable access to unauthorized .torrent links on their BitTorrent.com search engine, and in return, the MPAA agreed to not sue them. The arrangement has worked out rather well, as copyrighted material is unavailable from BitTorrent.com, and BitTorrent, Inc. has never been sued by any entertainment company. As it currently stands, BitTorrent, Inc. is the only P2P firm located in the United States that has not suffered a legal battle with the entertainment industry.
BitTorrent, Inc. also launched the BitTorrent Entertainment Network (the BEN). The BEN was like an iTunes for videos. It was an online store which uses the BitTorrent protocol to distribute independent work and pop culture entertainment.
The BEN showed significant potential, since major TV and movie studios such as FOX, Paramount, and MTV provided it with an extensive collection of work, but the work wasn’t free and much of the content was riddled with DRM.
The debate between ‘free and pay’ has often plagued P2P developers trying to establish a legitimate market, as users continuously question the point of paying when the same work, often of much better quality and without DRM, is available on their favorite tracker or indexer. This fly in the ointment has prevented the entertainment industry from making serious headway in the file-sharing world.
Despite the agreement between BitTorrent, Inc. and the MPAA, the BEN would ultimately prove unsuccessful. Because of the worsening global recession and free alternatives, BitTorrent, Inc. was forced to shut the service down in December of 2008. It’s tough to make money when not only have to compete against pirates, but you also have to deal with pirates who use your own technology.
RazorBack2 Closes – February 2006
Razorback2 was a significant indexing server network using the ED2K protocol. During its peak, it was the largest ED2K server network, with well over 1 million simultaneous users. It was the largest ED2K network of its day, and its fall marked the beginning of the end for the centralized portion of the ED2K community.
Razorback2 was one of the last gasps from the early days of P2P. Centralized servers had their advantages – they provided solid foundation for large communities to grown around them. But they were also an enormous liability. It’s impossible to run a network as large as Razorback2, (impressively, 25-30% the size of FastTrack at its peak), and avoid the interest of copyright enforcement. Sure enough, in February of 2006, Belgian authorities seized the server hardware supporting Razorback2, while Swiss authorities took the owner into custody.
Prior to the raid of Razorback2, a lot of servers with the same name started popping up. But there were only two official IP addresses of Razorback2, and none of the new servers matched. This was enough to stir panic in the file-sharing community; were they entertainment industry fronts, looking to lure in unsuspecting file-sharers? Regardless, anything resembling the name Razorback2 wasn’t to be trusted – especially after the servers were taken offline.
The end of Razorback2 didn’t spell the end of ED2K. Rather, it hastened the declining importance of the centralized server. It also took focus away from ED2K and instead shined attention on BitTorrent. In the end, the loss of Razorback2 gave Kademlia its chance to shine. Today ED2K has reorganized under Kademlia – the results of which may yet to be realized.
The Pirate Bay Raid – May 2006
By May of 2006, the file-sharing community had decidedly adapted BitTorrent technology to fulfill their needs. TPB started out as a side project of Piratbyrån (The Bureau of Piracy). Piratbyrån is political organization which aims to counter the Swedish copyright authority, Anti-Piratbyrån. Piratbyrån is a vocal advocate of alternative copyright laws and remains highly active in Swedish politics. Although the two organizations were initially one entity, TPB soon took on a life of its own and now operates independently.
One of the more notable aspects of the early days of the TPB was the site’s collective sense of humor. This is typically displayed on their copyright page, which is a collection of copyright violation notices with very sarcastic and humor inducing responses. In an effort to garner attraction, one of TPB’s first publicity stunts came in June 2005, when it mocked a shutdown of their service. Earlier that month, TPB’s administrator Anakata told Slyck.com that their network was tracking approximately 66,000 torrents – a good start for a relative new comer and popular enough to attract significant attention. So when TPB’s population was confronted with another shut down notice so soon after EliteTorrents hit the shitter, panic mode set in briefly within the P2P community.
In 2006, TPB was smaller than today, but was still very significant. The demise of EliteTorrents, Youceff Torrents, LokiTorrents, SuprNova and PhoenixTorrents gave TPB an opportunity to become massive – and it did just that. By 2006, TPB had become home of the largest BitTorrent tracker network and the population to become a major problem for the entertainment industry, especially the MPAA.
On May 31, 2006, users of TPB were confronted with the unthinkable – approximately 50 Swedish police from the National Crime Unit executed raids against the Internet Service Provider Rex|Port 80 and web host PRQ in 10 different locations. During the raids, police confiscated servers hosting between 200-300 domains. Some belonged to TPB, most did not. Regardless, their mission was accomplished, and TPB was forced offline. Millions of BitTorrent users were scrambling for a new home and desperate for answers – albeit this frantic pace would last for only a few days. The TPB administration made the following announcement only a few days after the raid:
"I am happy to announce today that The Pirate Bay is back up! After not much hard work everything that was up before the incident last Wednesday is back up again. This time we're firing with the big cannons and say ‘IN YOUR FACE, HOLLYWOOD!"
A brief victory indeed for the entertainment industry. TPB eventually reached an unprecedented peak of nearly 25 million simultaneous users between 2008 and 2009. In the following years, the entertainment industry didn't give up, as TPB’s ownership would endure a prolonged legal trial in their home country. The Swedish trial resulted in a year of jail time each and fines totaling about $4 million dollars to be split among the four owners. Despite this, TPB is still around, although their tracker network has been replaced with magnet links.
Honorable mention: The Sony Rootkit Scandal - October 2005. Although this event had little direct impact on the course of file-sharing development, the inclusion of rootkit technology in Sony CDs did a good job in killing the moral argument often used by the entertainment industry.
:source: Source: Slyck News (http://www.slyck.com/story1889_Top_10_P2P_News_Stories_of_this_Decade)
First Napster Injunction - July 2000
The worlds separated by the time before and after Napster are polar opposites. If you remember how the Internet was before Napster’s launch in 1999, you’ll remember that finding music wasn’t very convenient. Remember AltaVista’s MP3 search? What about Lycos’ MP3 search? They actually weren’t too bad, but for most people, file-sharing wasn’t in the Internet vernacular just yet.
But there was a storm brewing in IRC, where searchable P2P networking had been thriving well before the arrival of Napster. The problem was, however, there simply weren’t enough people populating IRC to be a convenient avenue for distribution – primary because file-sharing on IRC was too difficult to use for average user.
Shawn Fanning was at the right place at the right time. The critical mass of necessary MP3 files and demand met at a special moment in Internet history, and Napster was an overnight success. Within a year, Napster was an irresistible avenue of MP3 distribution and a household name. During Napster’s rise, several other smaller P2P networks and protocols were quietly lurking in the distance.
In July 2000, the music industry was granted a temporary injunction order against Napster which threatened to shut down the network. That moment was truly one of the most defining events in file-sharing history. Although the order was stayed two day later, immediately following this news people began flooding other networks like Gnutella, OpenNap, Scour and iMesh. It showed that Napster wasn’t the end all and be of file-sharing, and more importantly, that it was impossible to rebottle the desire for digital music.
RIAA Lawsuit Campaign Begins - June 2003
Oh no it’s the RIAA lawsuits. The problem with shutting down Napster was that it didn’t fulfill its intended purpose: it didn’t return people to buying CDs, and it didn’t kill the P2P community. If anything it made heightened awareness and left people wondering what the next big thing would be.
As it turned out, FastTrack would become one of the many P2P networks of impressive size. Led by the Kazaa P2P application, FastTrack grew at a phenomenal clip, reaching a peak of around 4.5 million simultaneous users at any given time by June of 2003.
FastTrack was a prime target by the music industry because of its mainstream appeal, and also because it was considerably larger than Napster. In June 2003, the RIAA announced that it would initiate monetary demands from individuals suspected of distributing music via the FastTrack network. The lawsuit campaign resulted in an astounding 30,000 individuals being targeted – most of whom decided to settle for about $3,000 dollars. But there were a few hold outs, and some challenged the RIAA in court.
The most famous hold out was Jammie Thomas, the first consumer related legal victory for the music industry, who was eventually ordered to pay over $1.9 million dollars. Even those who were eventually absolved of any wrong doing by the courts still wound up investing years of their life to a campaign that at best was brutal. The music industry declared victory and quit the large scale lawsuit business in 2008.
The real result of the lawsuits wasn’t the annihilation of P2P networking. At the start of the lawsuit campaign, FastTrack was already in trouble. It was large, true enough, but it wasn’t an optimal mechanism for distributing large files, or for verifying the authenticity of files. People were already looking for something better, and thanks to the legal action of the music industry, their legal action hastened the transition to eDonkey2000 and more importantly, BitTorrent.
ShareReactor Shuts Down – March 2004
There’s a lot of technology that makes up the ED2K community. We already know about the servers, the protocols, and the clients that make up the infrastructure. But there’s an extensive community that puts all the pieces together. Two of the most significant communities in ED2K’s past were the indexing site ShareReactor, and the server network Razorback2.
The story of ShareReactor, as told by ED2K lore, began with a young lady named Geraldine, also known online as “Gowenna”. The site originally began as Gowenna.da.ru, however, as the site became more popular and more demand was placed on the servers, the site’s functionality and purpose was switched over to ShareReactor.com. In January of 2002, the site reported that Gowenna died in a car accident. One of the administrators, “Simon Moon” took over the site. Although the original administrator was no longer part of the community, ShareReactor.com would become the largest ED2K indexing site and perhaps the largest ED2K community.
Much like SuprNova was synonymous with BitTorrent, ShareReactor was an integral part of ED2K. Very few people used the search feature within eDonkey or eMule. Although the occasional pearl indeed could be found via the search feature, a search for “A Great Movie” may yield something never intended, such as malicious software. ShareReactor virtually eliminated this threat. Only verified links known to direct the user to valid files were posted. A team of moderators coupled with an extensive user comments and ratings helped fortify the system.
The ShareReactor forums, in addition to their index, were also well known resources for verified ED2K links. As ShareReactor became more popular, scrutiny of its potential copyright infringing behavior mounted. During its peak in March of 2004, the site suddenly went down without explanation. On March 12, a notice was posted to the site partially explaining the circumstance. (See: http://www.slyck.com/story424_ShareReactor_Down_Indefinitely)
"MAINPAGE & FORUM WILL MOST LIKELY NOT BE BACK UP, PLEASE DO NOT ASK WHY, WE WILL TELL YOU WHEN WE KNOW MORE!"
It would be revealed on March 16 that Swedish authorities acted on the behest of the Swiss Anti-Piracy-Federation (SAFE). Simon was initially held and questioned by the police, and then driven to his home where it was raided for evidence. The Swedish authorities seized the servers that hosted ShareReactor, including Simon Moon’s personal computers. From an AfterDawn interview (see: http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/simon_moon_interview_page_4.cfm)
“Taken was a whole lot; two ShareReactor servers, my private machine and my girlfriend's private machine, my folder with all bank files, although [I] gave them a copy of all my bank activities of the last 4 years already. Also all my backups went with them. At the end SR was down and [I] had none of my data left, personal and otherwise.”
Considering that ED2K was the biggest network for distributing large files at the time, news of this event reverberated throughout the community. Many other ED2K sites went offline in its wake, including the statistical site Jingle and ACFmovies.com (Asia Cinema Forums). ShareReactor had 225,000 registered members, and many times more that number of transient visitors. Smaller communities swelled with ShareReactor refuges desperately seeking ED2K links. In response, these smaller communities such as ShareConnector would soon become leading ED2K indexing sites.
Subsequent revivals of ShareReactor never recaptured its former glory. Attempted comebacks had the benefit of the ShareReactor name, but much like the reincarnated Napster, there’s no going back. The technological landscape turned irreversibly in BitTorrent’s favor, and the only way to make ShareReactor (thanks to being propped up by The Pirate Bay) even noticeably relevant was by indexing .torrent files.
Suprnova Forced Offline – December 2004
BitTorrent’s rise to popularity was helped by an indexing site called SuprNova.org that first appeared on the file-sharing landscape in late 2002. SuprNova was started by an individual named Andrej Preston, who also went by the moniker Sloncek (Slovenian for “little elephant”). Inspired by the absence of BitTorrent sites, a fondness for “Star Trek and stuff like that” and an appreciation for BitTorrent technology, SuprNova.org was born. Sloncek originally considered “SuperNova” as the site’s name; however, the domain was already taken. Instead, the name SuprNova would become the Universal BitTorrent Resource. Sloncek would later reflect that he preferred this name anyway, as it was also the name of his Linux box and felt it made the site more “special”.
Like many websites, SuprNova started with only several thousand users. SuprNova’s origins were modest, using a Linux box and a home broadband connection with an upload capacity of only 16 kb/second. Sloncek also went through the painstaking processes of adding each .torrent manually. His efforts paid off, as within a year, the site’s popularity exploded, requiring a network of mirror sites to accommodate the traffic. (See: http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1177)
“The site gained a reputation of completeness and integrity. Thousands of people submitted tens of thousands of torrent files. The fakes were all weeded out by a group of only 20 moderators. Their job was made easier with unmoderated submitters, who had gained the trust of the moderators, so could publish torrents directly to the front page.”
It was clear by 2004 that BitTorrent was the P2P protocol of choice, thanks in part to the exceptional .torrent database of SuprNova. In an attempt to stem the demand for TV shows and movies, the MPAA launched a multi-pronged legal assault against the BitTorrent community in the pre-Christmas months of 2004. One by one, most of the major communities, including Youceff Torrents, Phoenix Torrents and SuprNova, would fall as a result of this organized attack.
The global assault on the BitTorrent community would ultimately prove to have more bark than bite. From a public relations perspective, it achieved widespread publicity and furthered the entertainment industry’s anti-piracy message. From a technological perspective, it simply weeded out older communities in exchange for more advanced ones. SuprNova had already been in a state of decline by late 2004, at least from a technological perspective.
SuprNova’s index would close in December of 2004. Details surrounding that closure, however, would not come to light until nearly a year later. In November of 2004, Sloncek received a call from his ISP informing him that Slovenian authorities raided SuprNova’s main server farm. Although the servers were confiscated, Sloncek managed to quickly transfer SuperNova’s functionality to a Dutch web host. However, the growing pressure on Sloncek proved too much, and on December 19, he shut the site down for good, dealing a major psychological blow to the file-sharing community. But the story didn’t end there.
A few weeks prior the fall of SuprNova, excitement began to build over Sloncek’s involvement in new project called eXeem, a decentralized BitTorrent alternative that the RIAA or MPAA would be unable to take down because it would not have a central server. Instead of centralized trackers, eXeem would randomly designate users with adequate bandwidth and fast computers as nodes, which would coordinate file transfers and help users find peers. Swarming technology would still govern file transfers. As an added bonus, eXeem would be searchable. By December 1, the network already had 5,000 SuprNova beta testers. Had Sloncek discovered a way to eliminate the Achilles heel of the BitTorrent community? Not quite.
eXeem was owned by a company named Swarm Systems, Inc., which was located (at least on paper) in the Caribbean nation of St. Kitts and Nevis. Sloncek’s role was to promote the new project and act as the spokesperson, which should’ve been easy considering the popularity of SuperNova. However, things turned sour when Sloncek released details about eXeem’s functionality on a December 30th NovaStream radio interview. Particulars were sparse, but there was one stunning detail – it would be bundled with Cydoor, a piece of third party software that had a poor reputation in the P2P community.
Early versions of Cydoor were considered malicious and potentially damaging to the end user’s machine. The inclusion of Cydoor, coupled with scant details surrounding SuprNova’s closure, were enough to derail eXeem. Many former users exhibited fear and anger towards Sloncek, as his decision to use SuprNova’s good name to push eXeem – and in effect Cydoor - was highly unpopular.
Released just about one month after SuprNova’s fall, eXeem was quickly dismissed, with some in the community referring to it as “Kazaa jr.” Any comparison with Kazaa is considered an insult in the P2P community, especially since past versions of Kazaa contained Cydoor. It didn’t matter how great Suprnova once was or the potential eXeem had; the cast was set and the comparison to Kazaa sealed the fate of this doomed project.
eXeem aside, SuprNova and Sloncek’s contribution to the BitTorrent community are considered immeasurable by many file-sharers. SuprNova set the stage for what a BitTorrent experience should be, and set an example for future communities. Luckily for Sloncek, the prosecutor’s office dropped the matter and his computers and equipment were returned in October of 2005. He would later donate the SuprNova.org domain to The Pirate Bay, which then resurrected the site in 2007 – but is now a mere shadow of its former magnificence.
EliteTorrents and the Revenge of the Sith – May 2005
As the BitTorrent world crumbled around them, EliteTorrents, run by Scott McCausland, Grant Stanley, and Daniel Dove, remained online. EliteTorrents was a private and rather exclusive community. Access was only permitted to registered users of the site, and this was strictly enforced. Launched in 2003, EliteTorrents quickly gathered a user base of approximately 130,000 users by 2005. While this number is small compared to The Pirate Bay, it would soon gain widespread notoriety.
EliteTorrents was significant for two reasons: it was the last major US based BitTorrent community, and was the one responsible for prereleasing “Star Wars, Episode III, Revenge of the Sith” (ROTS) several hours prior to its May 19, 2005, theatrical release. The administrators of EliteTorrents are US citizens, the web server was US based, and the tracker was hosted in the Netherlands.
Two weeks prior to the May 2005 release of “Star Wars, Episode III, Revenge of the Sith” (ROTS), all was quiet on the Internet front. There were no signs that ROTS had been leaked – it would seem that heightened security, especially in the wake of previous prereleases, had paid off. Studios had invested millions on security measures to prevent screeners, which are near DVD quality films designed for critics to review, from leaking online. Despite these enhancements, file-sharers, journalists and bloggers everywhere were still anxiously waiting for the inevitable, and sure enough, 6 hours prior to the May 19th theatrical release of ROTS, EliteTorrents was tracking a .torrent of this highly anticipated prequel. Once it appeared on EliteTorrents, it spread throughout the Internet.
The quality of ROTS was exceptional; it was a “work print”, or an unfinished copy, that still had an unobtrusive counter in the center top of the video. Once this film came into the possession of the EliteTorrents administration, the temptation to share it proved irresistible. Scott McClauland uploaded the movie, a move that would prove fatal for EliteTorrents. As Scott McClausland later explained, the desire to be the best overcame good judgment.
“It was the fact that we had to keep going. We were on track to become the best BT tracker. And I believe that no site around now, or then, matches us at all. The legal actions were just par for the course. [It’s] not like we didn't know what we were doing.”
EliteTorrents was able to hold on a bit longer than their brethren, but the moment Star Wars was prereleased, all hell broke loose. On May 25, 2005, less than a week after the upload, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched Operation D-Elite, which forced the private EliteTorrents community offline.
Initially, the shutdown of EliteTorrents appeared as a hoax, or perhaps a hacker had manipulated the site. There were several reasons to suspect a hoax rather than government law enforcement involvement; the takedown notice was rather unimpressive, a strange set of characters “RTJKAS” appeared when the site was highlighted, and the site’s Dutch based trackers remained operational – only the website server was offline. But within a day, it was evident that the FBI and ICE had directly forced the site offline – a first in the P2P community.
"This morning, agents of the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed 10 search warrants across the United States against leading members of a technologically sophisticated P2P network known as Elite Torrents. Employing technology known as BitTorrent, the Elite Torrents network attracted more than 133,000 members and, in the last four months, allegedly facilitated the illegal distribution of more than 17,800 titles-including movies and software-which were downloaded 2.1 million times.
The fallout from this event was far reaching. Never again would a US based tracker rise to such prominence, and the legal repercussions on the administration were staggering. Scott McCausland and Grant Stanley both pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and one count of copyright infringement. Both received 5 months in prison, followed by 5 months of home detention. McCausland also received 2 years probation, while Stanley received 3 years probation, with an additional $3,000 dollar fine.
MGM vs Grokster Decision - June 2005
The situation began in October of 2001 when the RIAA and MPAA filed suit against Grokster and StreamCast (then MusicCity.) Both organizations had been successful in shutting down centralized networks such as Napaster and Scour. However, this round of lawsuits would prove more challenging as the fundamental difference in network architecture would prove to be the turning point for StreamCast and Grokster.
Unlike Napster or Scour, which used centralized indexing servers to catalog files on their networks, StreamCast and Grokster are considered “decentralized.” Decentralized networks do not have direct control of their network’s indexing responsibilities. Instead, this responsibility is distributed throughout the clients residing on the network.
After churning slowly through the courts, in April of 2003, Justice Steven Wilcox ruled in favor of StreamCast and Grokster. His ruling, based on the 1983 Sony vs. Universal decision (AKA the BetaMax case), stated that SreamCast and Grokster were not responsible for the content of their networks.
The MPAA and RIAA immediately appealed to the United States Federal Court of Appeals in California. Arguments were heard in February of 2004, in which the defense made a brilliant argument against the copyright industry. To no one's surprise, the court ruled in April 2004 that StreamCast and Grokster were not guilty of copyright infringement.
"This appeal presents the question of whether distributors of peer-to-peer file-sharing computer networking software may be held contributory or vicariously liable for copyright infringements by users," Justice Sidney R. Thomas wrote. "Under the circumstances presented by this case, we conclude that the defendants are not liable for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement and affirm the district court’s partial grant of summary judgment."
The case made its way to the Supreme Court, where the previous success of the P2P industry hit a brick wall. In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court disagreed with the previous rulings and remanded the case to the lower courts. This didn’t hand the entertainment industry an absolute victory, but it gave the entertainment industry the power to continue their lawsuit in the lower courts. It also introduced another dimension to the copyright debate: inducing copyright infringement. Unfortunately, none of the issues regarding P2P development legality were answered, as Grokster settled in November 2005 and StreamCast Networks filed for bankruptcy in 2008.
WinMX Disappears – September 2005
No P2P story would be complete without talking about WinMX. Since nearly the beginning of modern P2P history, WinMX has been along for the ride. Unlike most P2P communities though, community interest in this network was nearly unparalleled. WinMX started as an OpenNap network, but thanks to the efforts of the RIAA, OpenNap’s resourcefulness as a mainstream Napster alternative was quickly negated.
On May 18, 2001, FrontCode released an answer to the decline of OpenNap. WinMX 2.6 was released, and ushered in with it a new era of file-sharing. Unlike its predecessors, WinMX 2.6 was no longer just a simple OpenNap client as it established its own decentralized P2P network. Dubbed the WinMX PNP (Peer Networking Protocol) Network, its architecture took advantage of the growing decentralized movement. Its networking architecture was decentralized like Gnutella, however took advantage of supernodes for increased network efficiency. WinMX’s population exploded soon after, and became a favorite in the P2P community.
In an interview with Kevin Hearn on March 30, 2002, WinMX’s population had reached nearly 1 million simultaneous users. FrontCode president Kevin Hearn:
“On Monday, I finally put our recent hardware upgrades to work and put a trace into our system to measure unique IP levels in our v2.6 peer caches. The lowest day this week (Wednesday) there were ~2.1 million unique IPs that used any of our v2.6 caches. On the highest day (Friday), we measured 2.7M unique IPs. Based on these numbers, I would conservatively estimate our daily simultaneously connected client peak at about 1 million. Because we only know when a user gets on the network, and not when they exit, converting the daily unique count into a peak population count is a bit sketchy at best.”
There was never a problem with attracting users to the WinMX network – WinMX’s resourcefulness was able to sell itself. The big problem with WinMX was the pace of development. WinMX 4.0 was a highly anticipated release, which unfortunately for users, never occurred. The reasoning behind this is unknown, and Slyck questioned Kevin Hearn several times regarding the expected release time. 2003, 2004, and 2005 would come and go, with little in the way of version releases, save for a few minor updates. Development came to an end after the release of version 3.54, as September 2005 would set the final nail in WinMX’s coffin.
On September 13, 2005, FrontCode Technologies was the suspected recipient of a cease and desist letter from the RIAA. The RIAA letter demanded that FrontCode immediately stop the encouragement of copyright infringement on its network. Several days later on September 21, 2005, shocked members of this network found them unable to connect. FrontCode complied by taking the WinMX domain down, along with the critical host cache server.
The WinMX PNP community still exists to some extent, as committed users have been able to prop this old network back up. But WinMX’s greatest chance of success was superseded by BitTorrent, and the greatness that 4.0 may have bestowed is now just a historical footnote.
Bram Cohen & the MPAA – November 2005
The creation of BitTorrent, Inc. was seen as the transformation of the BitTorrent protocol from an underground piracy haven to a legitimate company. Furthering the legitimacy of BitTorrent was a historical “Memorandum of Understanding” between BitTorrent, Inc., and the MPAA. Never in the history of file-sharing had an entertainment industry trade group made peace with a P2P developer.
As part of this agreement, BitTorrent agreed to disable access to unauthorized .torrent links on their BitTorrent.com search engine, and in return, the MPAA agreed to not sue them. The arrangement has worked out rather well, as copyrighted material is unavailable from BitTorrent.com, and BitTorrent, Inc. has never been sued by any entertainment company. As it currently stands, BitTorrent, Inc. is the only P2P firm located in the United States that has not suffered a legal battle with the entertainment industry.
BitTorrent, Inc. also launched the BitTorrent Entertainment Network (the BEN). The BEN was like an iTunes for videos. It was an online store which uses the BitTorrent protocol to distribute independent work and pop culture entertainment.
The BEN showed significant potential, since major TV and movie studios such as FOX, Paramount, and MTV provided it with an extensive collection of work, but the work wasn’t free and much of the content was riddled with DRM.
The debate between ‘free and pay’ has often plagued P2P developers trying to establish a legitimate market, as users continuously question the point of paying when the same work, often of much better quality and without DRM, is available on their favorite tracker or indexer. This fly in the ointment has prevented the entertainment industry from making serious headway in the file-sharing world.
Despite the agreement between BitTorrent, Inc. and the MPAA, the BEN would ultimately prove unsuccessful. Because of the worsening global recession and free alternatives, BitTorrent, Inc. was forced to shut the service down in December of 2008. It’s tough to make money when not only have to compete against pirates, but you also have to deal with pirates who use your own technology.
RazorBack2 Closes – February 2006
Razorback2 was a significant indexing server network using the ED2K protocol. During its peak, it was the largest ED2K server network, with well over 1 million simultaneous users. It was the largest ED2K network of its day, and its fall marked the beginning of the end for the centralized portion of the ED2K community.
Razorback2 was one of the last gasps from the early days of P2P. Centralized servers had their advantages – they provided solid foundation for large communities to grown around them. But they were also an enormous liability. It’s impossible to run a network as large as Razorback2, (impressively, 25-30% the size of FastTrack at its peak), and avoid the interest of copyright enforcement. Sure enough, in February of 2006, Belgian authorities seized the server hardware supporting Razorback2, while Swiss authorities took the owner into custody.
Prior to the raid of Razorback2, a lot of servers with the same name started popping up. But there were only two official IP addresses of Razorback2, and none of the new servers matched. This was enough to stir panic in the file-sharing community; were they entertainment industry fronts, looking to lure in unsuspecting file-sharers? Regardless, anything resembling the name Razorback2 wasn’t to be trusted – especially after the servers were taken offline.
The end of Razorback2 didn’t spell the end of ED2K. Rather, it hastened the declining importance of the centralized server. It also took focus away from ED2K and instead shined attention on BitTorrent. In the end, the loss of Razorback2 gave Kademlia its chance to shine. Today ED2K has reorganized under Kademlia – the results of which may yet to be realized.
The Pirate Bay Raid – May 2006
By May of 2006, the file-sharing community had decidedly adapted BitTorrent technology to fulfill their needs. TPB started out as a side project of Piratbyrån (The Bureau of Piracy). Piratbyrån is political organization which aims to counter the Swedish copyright authority, Anti-Piratbyrån. Piratbyrån is a vocal advocate of alternative copyright laws and remains highly active in Swedish politics. Although the two organizations were initially one entity, TPB soon took on a life of its own and now operates independently.
One of the more notable aspects of the early days of the TPB was the site’s collective sense of humor. This is typically displayed on their copyright page, which is a collection of copyright violation notices with very sarcastic and humor inducing responses. In an effort to garner attraction, one of TPB’s first publicity stunts came in June 2005, when it mocked a shutdown of their service. Earlier that month, TPB’s administrator Anakata told Slyck.com that their network was tracking approximately 66,000 torrents – a good start for a relative new comer and popular enough to attract significant attention. So when TPB’s population was confronted with another shut down notice so soon after EliteTorrents hit the shitter, panic mode set in briefly within the P2P community.
In 2006, TPB was smaller than today, but was still very significant. The demise of EliteTorrents, Youceff Torrents, LokiTorrents, SuprNova and PhoenixTorrents gave TPB an opportunity to become massive – and it did just that. By 2006, TPB had become home of the largest BitTorrent tracker network and the population to become a major problem for the entertainment industry, especially the MPAA.
On May 31, 2006, users of TPB were confronted with the unthinkable – approximately 50 Swedish police from the National Crime Unit executed raids against the Internet Service Provider Rex|Port 80 and web host PRQ in 10 different locations. During the raids, police confiscated servers hosting between 200-300 domains. Some belonged to TPB, most did not. Regardless, their mission was accomplished, and TPB was forced offline. Millions of BitTorrent users were scrambling for a new home and desperate for answers – albeit this frantic pace would last for only a few days. The TPB administration made the following announcement only a few days after the raid:
"I am happy to announce today that The Pirate Bay is back up! After not much hard work everything that was up before the incident last Wednesday is back up again. This time we're firing with the big cannons and say ‘IN YOUR FACE, HOLLYWOOD!"
A brief victory indeed for the entertainment industry. TPB eventually reached an unprecedented peak of nearly 25 million simultaneous users between 2008 and 2009. In the following years, the entertainment industry didn't give up, as TPB’s ownership would endure a prolonged legal trial in their home country. The Swedish trial resulted in a year of jail time each and fines totaling about $4 million dollars to be split among the four owners. Despite this, TPB is still around, although their tracker network has been replaced with magnet links.
Honorable mention: The Sony Rootkit Scandal - October 2005. Although this event had little direct impact on the course of file-sharing development, the inclusion of rootkit technology in Sony CDs did a good job in killing the moral argument often used by the entertainment industry.
:source: Source: Slyck News (http://www.slyck.com/story1889_Top_10_P2P_News_Stories_of_this_Decade)