File sharing networks

File sharing networks

File sharing based on peer-to-peer technologies is the practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information, such as computer programs, multi-media (audio, video), documents, or electronic books. Thus, all participants can be clients and at the same time servers. It works in the following way. A user installs a special program (client) to the computer that works with the certain P2P network and after that this user can search the shared media on other users’ computers and download this media from them across the Internet. P2P networks allow sharing any type of digital content, including songs, DVD-quality movies, computer programs and video games.

Napster was one of the first file sharing services. It was created in 1999 by a 19-years-old student of the Northeastern University Shawn Funning. Its aim was to allow people to share their MP3 music files for free. But it has existed only for two years. Because of conflicts with rightholders and after the court`s decision it had to stop its work and pay off big fines.

Napster was a centralized file sharing network. It used central servers that indexed Internet files and played the role of the unit search engine. If someone closed the server all the net would stop working. The following file sharing networks took their predecessor`s mistake into consideration. Nowadays there are two types of popular P2P networks: decentralized that use no notating servers or partly decentralized that use many servers so if one of them suddenly stops it won`t blockade all the net. For example, the close of the eDonkey`s official client because of the lawsuit of the Recording Industry Association of America though brought the popularity of the net down but did not annihilate it. The net has had and now has alternative servers and program-clients such as eMule.

There are different P2P protocols and based on them networks such as eDonkey, Dirrect Connect or Gnutella. According to the Ipoque Agency today the most popular P2P networks are those that based on BitTorrent protocol. In Eastern Europe and Russia Torrent is used by 80% of users and in West Europe — 60%.

Torrent nets consist of many clients (programs installed by users to work with the Net) and trackers (servers that index files and coordinate connection among users). Trackers usually have their own sites where users register themselves in order to download from them any film or music file that they want. At first users download to their client corresponding to the chosen film .torrent files. After that the film starts loading. Trackers automatically provides a well-coordinated work among all participants: leechers (those who download and at the same time distribute files), seeders (those who have the file as a whole and distribute it) and peers (connections appearing between them).

File sharing networks allow people to share programs, music and films freely so it causes a lot of judicial contests concerning copyright interests. But the main principle of torrent-trackers is that they save not pirated files but .torrent files that are only metadata set and do not have the direct concern to downloading files. That is why there are a lot of judicial details that are connected with torrent-nets that each country decides in its own way. Of course, the absolute downloading of P2P files is considered to be a copyright violation but in Russia there is no legal conception according to which users that download files can be accused. Only users that distribute files can be guilty.

Most popular torrent-clients

There are a lot of torrent-clients for all popular operating systems, most of them are distributing for free. The main virtues of torrent-clients are easy-to-use interface, system resource “saving”, downloading speed optimization, the ability to play the role of torrent-trackers. Free and most popular torrent-clients are:

uTorrent is the most popular torrent-client for operating system Windows and Mac. According to data portal TorrentFreak by the end of December,2008 its audience was 28 million users. The program was released in December, 2005. Nowadays 11,6% of users in Europe have installed Torrent to their computers, and 5% — in the USA.

BitComet is a client that works simultaneously with BitTorrent protocol and eDonkey for Windows. The program was first released in 2003 and now is translated into 52 foreign languages, including Russian. What is more, the plug-in includes video-player that allow to watch .flv and .swf files.

Vuze. It is a client distributed according to the GPL license. It is translated into 36 foreign languages including Russian. Besides BitTorrent protocol it works with I2P and Tor protocols for Windows (there is a version that supports Linux system). More than 500 thousand copies of this client are downloaded from the official site of the company every day.

Most popular torrent-clients for operating systems based on Linux are Ktorrent , Qtorrent, Transmission, rTorrent.

Most popular torrent-sites in the world

According to eBizMBA, a company that monitors the Web-market, world`s top five torrent-sites are:

Mininova is the biggest torrent-site and web search engine of .torrent files, founded in 2005. More than 30 million people visit the site every month.

ThePirateBay is one of the biggest torrent-trackers in the world. 2,7 million people in the USA visit its site every month. It has become famous for the great scandal suddenly broken out around it. In Sweden the holders of the site are accused of piracy and if they are found guilty they can be sentenced to two years` imprisonment. And if it happens it will create a serious precedent for officially acknowledgment torrent-systems to be pirated. The Swedish society was so alarmed that the lawsuit has led to the creation of the political party named Pirat Bay that has good chances to go into Parliament in the nearest elections.

isohunt.com. The site has more than 15 million users every month. It is a torrent-trackers search engine that indexes almost 100 thousand trackers with the total amount of peers of more than 17 million.

torrentz.com. The site founded in 2003 has 1,5 million users every month. It is not a tracker but it searches for .torrent files in 816 trackers, it indexed 152 479 536 seeds.

BTJunkie. The site is a broadened search engine of .torrents files in internet. 810 thousand users visit the site every month. Here more than 2,5 million active torrent-trackers are presented.

Most popular torrent-sites in Russia

torrents.ru.It is the biggest torrent-tracker in Russia. In June,2009 it counts 3,5 million registered users and 7,5 million peers. Registration is available for all comers but distribution is moderated.

tfile.ru. More than 1,8 million people visit the site every month. Here one can download not only films but also music, different programs.

kinozal.tv.It is a tracker specializing in video films. More than 2,5 million people visit the site every month.

Not 2P2 file sharing

Rapidshare.com. is the biggest file sharing service that does not use the P2P protocol. Today near 4,3 million people visit the site every month. One can use it for free but there are limits on the amount and size of downloading files. Non-paying users are required to wait 30 to 149 seconds, depending on the filesize, before the download starts and their download-speed is limited from 25 KB/s up to 250 KB/s (depending on the server-load). In October, 2008 Rapidshare lowered the maximum waiting time to 15 minutes between each download from the previous maximum of 90 minutes. Registration and payment allow benefits such as unlimited download speed, download of several files simultaneously, the facility to interrupt and re-start downloads, uploading and downloading bigger files up to 2 GB.