Usenet

Usenet (/ˈjuːznɛt/),[1] short for User's Network,[1] is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was established in 1980.[2] Users read and post messages (called articles or posts, and collectively termed news) to one or more topic categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects and is the precursor to the Internet forums that were developed after the introduction of the World Wide Web. Discussions are threaded, as with web forums and BBSes, though posts are stored on the server sequentially.[3][4]

A major difference between a BBS or web message board and Usenet is the absence of a central server and dedicated administrator or hosting provider. Usenet is distributed among a large, constantly changing set of news servers that store and forward messages to one another via "news feeds". Individual users may read messages from and post to a local (or simply preferred) news server, which can be operated by anyone, and those posts will automatically be forwarded to any other news servers peered with the local one, while the local server will receive any news its peers have that it currently lacks. This results in the automatic proliferation of content posted by any user on any server to any other user subscribed to the same newsgroups on other servers.

As with BBSes and message boards, individual news servers or service providers are under no obligation to carry any specific content, and may refuse to do so for many reasons: a news server might attempt to control the spread of spam by refusing to accept or forward any posts that trigger spam filters, or a server without high-capacity data storage may refuse to carry any newsgroups used primarily for file sharing, limiting itself to discussion-oriented groups. However, unlike BBSes and web forums, the dispersed nature of Usenet usually permits users who are interested in receiving some content to access it simply by choosing to connect to news servers that carry the feeds they want.

Usenet is culturally and historically significant in the networked world, having given rise to, or popularized, many widely recognized concepts and terms such as "FAQ", "flame", "sockpuppet", and "spam".[5] In the early 1990s, shortly before access to the Internet became commonly affordable, Usenet connections via FidoNet's dial-up BBS networks made long-distance or worldwide discussions and other communication widespread.[6]

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* v
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* e

The name Usenet comes from the term "users' network".[3] The first Usenet group was NET.general, which quickly became net.general. The first commercial spam on Usenet was from immigration attorneys Canter and Siegel advertising green card services.[7]

On the Internet, Usenet is transported via the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) on Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) port 119 for standard, unprotected connections, and on TCP port 563 for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encrypted connections.

## Contents

* 1 Introduction
* 2 ISPs, news servers, and newsfeeds
* 2.1 Newsreaders
* 2.2 Moderated and unmoderated newsgroups
* 2.3 Technical details
* 2.4 Organization
* 2.5 Binary content
* 2.5.1 Binary retention time
* 2.5.2 Legal issues
* 3 History
* 3.1 Network
* 3.2 Software
* 3.3 Public venue
* 3.4 Internet jargon and history
* 3.5 Decline
* 4 Usenet traffic changes
* 5 Archives
* 5.1 Archives by Deja News and Google Groups
* 6 See also
* 6.1 Usenet newsreaders
* 6.2 Usenet/newsgroup service providers
* 6.3 Usenet history
* 6.4 Usenet administrators
* 7 References
* 8 Further reading
* 9 External links
* 10 History
* 10.1 Techniques used for video sharing
* 11 Types
* 11.1 Peer-to-peer file sharing
* 11.2 File sync and sharing services
* 12 Academic file sharing
* 13 Public opinion of file sharing
* 14 Economic impact
* 14.1 Market dominance
* 14.2 Availability
* 15 Copyright issues
* 16 See also
* 17 References
* 18 Further reading
* 19 External links

## Introduction

Usenet was conceived in 1979 and publicly established in 1980, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University,[8][2] over a decade before the World Wide Web went online (and thus before the general public received access to the Internet), making it one of the oldest computer network communications systems still in widespread use. It was originally built on the "poor man's ARPANET", employing UUCP as its transport protocol to offer mail and file transfers, as well as announcements through the newly developed news software such as A News. The name "Usenet" emphasizes its creators' hope that the USENIX organization would take an active role in its operation.[9]

The articles that users post to Usenet are organized into topical categories known as newsgroups, which are themselves logically organized into hierarchies of subjects. For instance, sci.math and sci.physics are within the sci.* hierarchy. Or, talk.origins and talk.atheism are in the talk.* hierarchy. When a user subscribes to a newsgroup, the news client software keeps track of which articles that user has read.[10]

In most newsgroups, the majority of the articles are responses to some other article. The set of articles that can be traced to one single non-reply article is called a thread. Most modern newsreaders display the articles arranged into threads and subthreads. For example, in the wine-making newsgroup rec.crafts.winemaking, someone might start a thread called "What's the best yeast?" and that thread or conversation might grow into dozens of replies long, by perhaps six or eight different authors. Over several days, that conversation about different wine yeasts might branch into several sub-threads in a tree-like form.

When a user posts an article, it is initially only available on that user's news server. Each news server talks to one or more other servers (its "newsfeeds") and exchanges articles with them. In this fashion, the article is copied from server to server and should eventually reach every server in the network. The later peer-to-peer networks operate on a similar principle, but for Usenet it is normally the sender, rather than the receiver, who initiates transfers. Usenet was designed under conditions when networks were much slower and not always available. Many sites on the original Usenet network would connect only once or twice a day to batch-transfer messages in and out.[11] This is largely because the POTS network was typically used for transfers, and phone charges were lower at night.

The format and transmission of Usenet articles is similar to that of Internet e-mail messages. The difference between the two is that Usenet articles can be read by any user whose news server carries the group to which the message was posted, as opposed to email messages, which have one or more specific recipients.[12]

Today, Usenet has diminished in importance with respect to Internet forums, blogs, mailing lists and social media. Usenet differs from such media in several ways: Usenet requires no personal registration with the group concerned; information need not be stored on a remote server; archives are always available; and reading the messages does not require a mail or web client, but a news client. However, it is now possible to read and participate in Usenet newsgroups to a large degree using ordinary web browsers since most newsgroups are now copied to several web sites.[13] The groups in  are still widely used for data transfer.

## ISPs, news servers, and newsfeeds

Usenet Provider Map

Many Internet service providers (ISPs), and many other Internet sites, operate news servers for their users to access. ISPs that do not operate their own servers directly will often offer their users an account from another provider that specifically operates newsfeeds. In early news implementations, the server and newsreader were a single program suite, running on the same system. Today, one uses separate newsreader client software, a program that resembles an email client but accesses Usenet servers instead.[14]

Not all ISPs run news servers. A news server is one of the most difficult Internet services to administer because of the large amount of data involved, small customer base (compared to mainstream Internet service), and a disproportionately high volume of customer support incidents (frequently complaining of missing news articles). Some ISPs outsource news operations to specialist sites, which will usually appear to a user as though the ISP itself runs the server. Many of these sites carry a restricted newsfeed, with a limited number of newsgroups. Commonly omitted from such a newsfeed are foreign-language newsgroups and the  hierarchy, which largely carries software, music, videos and images, and accounts for over 99 percent of article data. There are also Usenet providers that offer a full unrestricted service to users whose ISPs do not carry news, or that carry a restricted feed. [15]

### Newsreaders

Newsgroups are typically accessed with newsreaders: applications that allow users to read and reply to postings in newsgroups. These applications act as clients to one or more news servers. Historically, Usenet was associated with the Unix operating system developed at AT&T, but newsreaders were soon available for all major operating systems.[16] Email client programs and Internet suites of the late 1990s and 2000s often included an integrated newsreader. Newsgroup enthusiasts often criticized these as inferior to standalone newsreaders that made correct use of Usenet protocols, standards and conventions.[17]

With the rise of the World Wide Web (WWW), web front-ends (web2news) have become more common. Web front ends have lowered the technical entry barrier requirements to that of one application and no Usenet NNTP server account. There are numerous websites now offering web based gateways to Usenet groups, although some people have begun filtering messages made by some of the web interfaces for one reason or another.[18][19] Google Groups[20] is one such web based front end and some web browsers can access Google Groups via news: protocol links directly.[21]

### Moderated and unmoderated newsgroups

A minority of newsgroups are moderated, meaning that messages submitted by readers are not distributed directly to Usenet, but instead are emailed to the moderators of the newsgroup for approval. The moderator is to receive submitted articles, review them, and inject approved articles so that they can be properly propagated worldwide. Articles approved by a moderator must bear the Approved: header line. Moderators ensure that the messages that readers see in the newsgroup conform to the charter of the newsgroup, though they are not required to follow any such rules or guidelines.[22] Typically, moderators are appointed in the proposal for the newsgroup, and changes of moderators follow a succession plan.[23]

Historically, a mod.* hierarchy existed before Usenet reorganization.[24] Now, moderated newsgroups may appear in any hierarchy, typically with `.moderated` added to the group name.

Usenet newsgroups in the Big-8 hierarchy are created by proposals called a Request for Discussion, or RFD. The RFD is required to have the following information: newsgroup name, checkgroups file entry, and moderated or unmoderated status. If the group is to be moderated, then at least one moderator with a valid email address must be provided. Other information which is beneficial but not required includes: a charter, a rationale, and a moderation policy if the group is to be moderated.[25] Discussion of the new newsgroup proposal follows, and is finished with the members of the Big-8 Management Board making the decision, by vote, to either approve or disapprove the new newsgroup.

Unmoderated newsgroups form the majority of Usenet newsgroups, and messages submitted by readers for unmoderated newsgroups are immediately propagated for everyone to see. Minimal editorial content filtering vs propagation speed form one crux of the Usenet community. One little cited defense of propagation is canceling a propagated message, but few Usenet users use this command and some news readers do not offer cancellation commands, in part because article storage expires in relatively short order anyway. Almost all unmoderated Usenet groups tend to receive large amounts of spam.[26][27][28]

### Technical details

Usenet is a set of protocols for generating, storing and retrieving news "articles" (which resemble Internet mail messages) and for exchanging them among a readership which is potentially widely distributed. These protocols most commonly use a flooding algorithm which propagates copies throughout a network of participating servers. Whenever a message reaches a server, that server forwards the message to all its network neighbors that haven't yet seen the article. Only one copy of a message is stored per server, and each server makes it available on demand to the (typically local) readers able to access that server. The collection of Usenet servers has thus a certain peer-to-peer character in that they share resources by exchanging them, the granularity of exchange however is on a different scale than a modern peer-to-peer system and this characteristic excludes the actual users of the system who connect to the news servers with a typical client-server application, much like an email reader.

RFC 850 was the first formal specification of the messages exchanged by Usenet servers. It was superseded by RFC 1036 and subsequently by RFC 5536 and RFC 5537.

In cases where unsuitable content has been posted, Usenet has support for automated removal of a posting from the whole network by creating a cancel message, although due to a lack of authentication and resultant abuse, this capability is frequently disabled. Copyright holders may still request the manual deletion of infringing material using the provisions of World Intellectual Property Organization treaty implementations, such as the United States Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, but this would require giving notice to each individual news server administrator.

On the Internet, Usenet is transported via the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) on TCP port 119 for standard, unprotected connections and on TCP port 563 for SSL encrypted connections.

### Organization

The "Big Nine" hierarchies of Usenet

The major set of worldwide newsgroups is contained within nine hierarchies, eight of which are operated under consensual guidelines that govern their administration and naming. The current Big Eight are:

* comp.* – computer-related discussions (comp.software, comp.sys.amiga)
* humanities.* – fine arts, literature, and philosophy (humanities.classics, humanities.design.misc)
* misc.* – miscellaneous topics (misc.education, misc.forsale, misc.kids)
* news.* – discussions and announcements about news (meaning Usenet, not current events) (news.groups, news.admin)
* rec.* – recreation and entertainment (rec.music, rec.arts.movies)
* sci.* – science related discussions (sci.psychology, sci.research)
* soc.* – social discussions (soc.college.org, soc.culture.african)
* talk.* – talk about various controversial topics (talk.religion, talk.politics, talk.origins)

The alt.* hierarchy is not subject to the procedures controlling groups in the Big Eight, and it is as a result less organized. Groups in the alt.* hierarchy tend to be more specialized or specific—for example, there might be a newsgroup under the Big Eight which contains discussions about children's books, but a group in the alt hierarchy may be dedicated to one specific author of children's books. Binaries are posted in  , making it the largest of all the hierarchies.

Many other hierarchies of newsgroups are distributed alongside these. Regional and language-specific hierarchies such as japan.*, malta.* and ne.* serve specific countries and regions such as Japan, Malta and New England. Companies and projects administer their own hierarchies to discuss their products and offer community technical support, such as the historical gnu.* hierarchy from the Free Software Foundation. Microsoft closed its newsserver in June 2010, providing support for its products over forums now.[29] Some users prefer to use the term "Usenet" to refer only to the Big Eight hierarchies; others include alt.* as well. The more general term "netnews" incorporates the entire medium, including private organizational news systems.

Informal sub-hierarchy conventions also exist. *.answers are typically moderated cross-post groups for FAQs. An FAQ would be posted within one group and a cross post to the *.answers group at the head of the hierarchy seen by some as a refining of information in that news group. Some subgroups are recursive—to the point of some silliness in alt.* .

### Binary content

A visual example of the many complex steps required to prepare data to be uploaded to Usenet newsgroups. These steps must be done again in reverse to download data from Usenet.

Usenet was originally created to distribute text content encoded in the 7-bit ASCII character set. With the help of programs that encode 8-bit values into ASCII, it became practical to distribute binary files as content. Binary posts, due to their size and often-dubious copyright status, were in time restricted to specific newsgroups, making it easier for administrators to allow or disallow the traffic.

The oldest widely used encoding method for binary content is uuencode, from the Unix UUCP package. In the late 1980s, Usenet articles were often limited to 60,000 characters, and larger hard limits exist today. Files are therefore commonly split into sections that require reassembly by the reader.

With the header extensions and the Base64 and Quoted-Printable MIME encodings, there was a new generation of binary transport. In practice, MIME has seen increased adoption in text messages, but it is avoided for most binary attachments. Some operating systems with metadata attached to files use specialized encoding formats. For Mac OS, both BinHex and special MIME types are used. Other lesser known encoding systems that may have been used at one time were BTOA, XX encoding, BOO, and USR encoding.

In an attempt to reduce file transfer times, an informal file encoding known as yEnc was introduced in 2001. It achieves about a 30% reduction in data transferred by assuming that most 8-bit characters can safely be transferred across the network without first encoding into the 7-bit ASCII space. The most common method of uploading large binary posts to Usenet is to convert the files into RAR archives and create Parchive files for them. Parity files are used to recreate missing data when not every part of the files reaches a server.

Binary newsgroups can be used to distribute files, and, as of 2022, some remain popular as an alternative to BitTorrent to share and download files.[30]

#### Binary retention time

October 2020 screenshot showing 60 PB of usenet group data[31]

Each news server allocates a certain amount of storage space for content in each newsgroup. When this storage has been filled, each time a new post arrives, old posts are deleted to make room for the new content. If the network bandwidth available to a server is high but the storage allocation is small, it is possible for a huge flood of incoming content to overflow the allocation and push out everything that was in the group before it. The average length of time that posts are able to stay on the server before being deleted is commonly called the retention time.

Binary newsgroups are only able to function reliably if sufficient storage is allocated to handle the amount of articles being added. Without sufficient retention time, a reader will be unable to download all parts of the binary before it is flushed out of the group's storage allocation. This was at one time how posting undesired content was countered; the newsgroup would be flooded with random garbage data posts, of sufficient quantity to push out all the content to be suppressed. This has been compensated by service providers allocating enough storage to retain everything posted each day, including spam floods, without deleting anything.

Modern Usenet news servers have enough capacity to archive years of binary content even when flooded with new data at the maximum daily speed available.

In part because of such long retention times, as well as growing Internet upload speeds, Usenet is also used by individual users to store backup data.[32] While commercial providers offer easier to use online backup services, storing data on Usenet is free of charge (although access to Usenet itself may not be). The method requires the uploader to cede control over the distribution of the data; the files are automatically disseminated to all Usenet providers exchanging data for the news group it is posted to. In general the user must manually select, prepare and upload the data. The data is typically encrypted because it is available to anyone to download the backup files. After the files are uploaded, having multiple copies spread to different geographical regions around the world on different news servers decreases the chances of data loss.

Major Usenet service providers have a retention time of more than 12 years.[33] This results in more than 60 petabytes (60000 terabytes) of storage (see image). When using Usenet for data storage, providers that offer longer retention time are preferred to ensure the data will survive a longer time than on services with lower retention time.

#### Legal issues

While binary newsgroups can be used to distribute completely legal user-created works, free software, and public domain material, some binary groups are used to illegally distribute proprietary software, copyrighted media, and pornographic material.

ISP-operated Usenet servers frequently block access to all  groups to both reduce network traffic and to avoid related legal issues. Commercial Usenet service providers claim to operate as a telecommunications service, and assert that they are not responsible for the user-posted binary content transferred via their equipment. In the United States, Usenet providers can qualify for protection under the DMCA Safe Harbor regulations, provided that they establish a mechanism to comply with and respond to takedown notices from copyright holders.[34]

Removal of copyrighted content from the entire Usenet network is a nearly impossible task, due to the rapid propagation between servers and the retention done by each server. Petitioning a Usenet provider for removal only removes it from that one server's retention cache, but not any others. It is possible for a special post cancellation message to be distributed to remove it from all servers, but many providers ignore cancel messages by standard policy, because they can be easily falsified and submitted by anyone.[35][36] For a takedown petition to be most effective across the whole network, it would have to be issued to the origin server to which the content has been posted, before it has been propagated to other servers. Removal of the content at this early stage would prevent further propagation, but with modern high speed links, content can be propagated as fast as it arrives, allowing no time for content review and takedown issuance by copyright holders.[37]

Establishing the identity of the person posting illegal content is equally difficult due to the trust-based design of the network. Like SMTP email, servers generally assume the header and origin information in a post is true and accurate. However, as in SMTP email, Usenet post headers are easily falsified so as to obscure the true identity and location of the message source.[38] In this manner, Usenet is significantly different from modern P2P services; most P2P users distributing content are typically immediately identifiable to all other users by their network address, but the origin information for a Usenet posting can be completely obscured and unobtainable once it has propagated past the original server.[39]

Also unlike modern P2P services, the identity of the downloaders is hidden from view. On P2P services a downloader is identifiable to all others by their network address. On Usenet, the downloader connects directly to a server, and only the server knows the address of who is connecting to it. Some Usenet providers do keep usage logs, but not all make this logged information casually available to outside parties such as the Recording Industry Association of America.[40][41][42] The existence of anonymising gateways to USENET also complicates the tracing of a postings true origin.

## History

UUCP/Usenet Logical Map  —   June 1, 1981 / mods by S. McGeady November 19, 1981

(ucbvax)
+=+===================================+==+
| |                                   |  |
| |                wivax              |  |
| |                  |                |  |
| |         microsoft| uiucdcs        |  |
| |  genradbo      | | |  |           |  |           (Tektronix)
| |     |          | | |  | purdue    |  |
| decvax+===+=+====+=+=+  | |         |  |
|       |   | |      |    | | pur-phy |  |                        tekmdp
|       |   | |      |    | |     |   |  |                           |
+@@@@@@cca  | |      |    | |     |   |  |                           |
|       |   | |  +=pur-ee=+=+=====+===+  |                           |
|    csin   | |  |   |                   |                           |
|           | +==o===+===================+==+========+=======+====teklabs=+
|           |    |                                                        |
|           |    |                    pdp phs   grumpy  wolfvax           |
|           |    |                     |   |      |        |              |
|           | cincy                unc=+===+======+========+              |
|           |   |        bio       |                                      |
|           |   |  (Misc) |        |            (Misc)                    |
|           |   | sii  reed        |    dukgeri duke34  utzoo             |
|           |   |  |    |          |         |   |       |                |
|      +====+=+=+==+====++======+==++===duke=+===+=======+==+=========+   |
|      |      |    |     |      |   |                       |         |   | u1100s
|    bmd70  ucf-cs ucf   | andiron  |                       |         |   |   |
|                        |          |                       |         |   |   |
|                  red   |          |                       |         |   | pyuxh
|                   |    |          |     zeppo             |         |   |   |
|       psupdp
psuvax  |          |       |               |         |   |   |
|                   |    |          | alice |   whuxlb      | utah-cs |   | houxf
|                allegra |          | |     |     |         |   |     |   |   |
|                     |  |          | |     |     |         |   |  +--chico
+
|                 +===+=mhtsa====research   |   /=+=======harpo=+==+     |    |
|                 |   |  |  |               |  /            |            |    |
|               hocsr |  |  +=+=============+=/           cbosg
+      |    |
|    ucbopt           |  |    |                             |     |   esquire |
|       :             |  |    |                           cbosgd  |           |
|       :             |  |    |                                   |           |
|    ucbcory          |  | eagle==+=====+=====+=====+=====+       |           |
|       :             |  |  |     |     |     |     |     |       |  +-uwvax--+
|       :             |  |  |   mhuxa mhuxh mhuxj mhuxm mhuxv     |  |
|       :             |  |  |                                     |  |
|       :             |  |  |        +

-o--+
|       :             |  |  |        |                            |
|    ucbcad           |  |  |      ihpss    mh135a                |
|       :             |  |  |        |         |                  |
|       :             \--o--o

ihnss
-vax135
-cornell     |
|       :                |  |        |         |                  |
+=+==ucbvax==========+===+==+=+======+=======+=+========+=========+
(UCB) :            |        |              |          | (Silicon Valley)
ucbarpa      cmevax      |              |        menlo70--hao
:                     |              |        |    |
ucbonyx                  |              |        |   sri-unix
|           ucsfcgl     |
|              |        |
Legend:                       |              |      sytek====+========+

-                       |              |               |        |
- | / \ + = Uucp           sdcsvax=+=======+=+======+     intelqa   zehntel
=           "Bus"                  |       |        |
o           jumps               sdcarl  phonlab  sdcattb
:           Berknet
@           Arpanet

UUCP/Usenet Logical Map, original by Steven McGeady.

Copyright© 1981, 1996

Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman. Copied with permission from

The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation.[43]

Newsgroup experiments first occurred in 1979. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis of Duke University came up with the idea as a replacement for a local announcement program, and established a link with nearby University of North Carolina using Bourne shell scripts written by Steve Bellovin. The public release of news was in the form of conventional compiled software, written by Steve Daniel and Truscott.[8][44] In 1980, Usenet was connected to ARPANET through UC Berkeley, which had connections to both Usenet and ARPANET. Mary Ann Horton, the graduate student who set up the connection, began "feeding mailing lists from the ARPANET into Usenet" with the "fa" ("From ARPANET"[45]) identifier.[46] Usenet gained 50 member sites in its first year, including Reed College, University of Oklahoma, and Bell Labs,[8] and the number of people using the network increased dramatically; however, it was still a while longer before Usenet users could contribute to ARPANET.[47]

### Network

UUCP networks spread quickly due to the lower costs involved, and the ability to use existing leased lines, X.25 links or even ARPANET connections. By 1983, thousands of people participated from more than 500 hosts, mostly universities and Bell Labs sites but also a growing number of Unix-related companies; the number of hosts nearly doubled to 940 in 1984. More than 100 newsgroups existed, more than 20 devoted to Unix and other computer-related topics, and at least a third to recreation.[48][8] As the mesh of UUCP hosts rapidly expanded, it became desirable to distinguish the Usenet subset from the overall network. A vote was taken at the 1982 USENIX conference to choose a new name. The name Usenet was retained, but it was established that it only applied to news.[49] The name UUCPNET became the common name for the overall network.

In addition to UUCP, early Usenet traffic was also exchanged with FidoNet and other dial-up BBS networks. By the mid-1990s there were almost 40,000 FidoNet systems in operation, and it was possible to communicate with millions of users around the world, with only local telephone service. Widespread use of Usenet by the BBS community was facilitated by the introduction of UUCP feeds made possible by MS-DOS implementations of UUCP, such as UFGATE (UUCP to FidoNet Gateway), FSUUCP and UUPC. In 1986, RFC 977 provided the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) specification for distribution of Usenet articles over TCP/IP as a more flexible alternative to informal Internet transfers of UUCP traffic. Since the Internet boom of the 1990s, almost all Usenet distribution is over NNTP.[50]

### Software

Early versions of Usenet used Duke's A News software, designed for one or two articles a day. Matt Glickman and Horton at Berkeley produced an improved version called B News that could handle the rising traffic (about 50 articles a day as of late 1983).[8] With a message format that offered compatibility with Internet mail and improved performance, it became the dominant server software. C News, developed by Geoff Collyer and Henry Spencer at the University of Toronto, was comparable to B News in features but offered considerably faster processing. In the early 1990s, InterNetNews by Rich Salz was developed to take advantage of the continuous message flow made possible by NNTP versus the batched store-and-forward design of UUCP. Since that time INN development has continued, and other news server software has also been developed.[51]

### Public venue

Usenet was the first Internet community and the place for many of the most important public developments in the pre-commercial Internet. It was the place where Tim Berners-Lee announced the launch of the World Wide Web,[52] where Linus Torvalds announced the Linux project,[53] and where Marc Andreessen announced the creation of the Mosaic browser and the introduction of the image tag,[54] which revolutionized the World Wide Web by turning it into a graphical medium.

### Internet jargon and history

Many jargon terms now in common use on the Internet originated or were popularized on Usenet.[55] Likewise, many conflicts which later spread to the rest of the Internet, such as the ongoing difficulties over spamming, began on Usenet.[56]

> "Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea. Massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it."

— Gene Spafford, 1992

### Decline

Sascha Segan of PC Magazine said in 2008 that "Usenet has been dying for years".[57] He argued that it was dying by the late 1990s, when large binary files became a significant proportion of Usenet traffic, and Internet service providers "sensibly started to wonder why they should be reserving big chunks of their own disk space for pirated movies and repetitive porn."

AOL discontinued Usenet access in 2005. In May 2010, Duke University, whose implementation had started Usenet more than 30 years earlier, decommissioned its Usenet server, citing low usage and rising costs.[58][59] On February 4, 2011, the Usenet news service link at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (news.unc.edu) was retired after 32 years. In response, John Biggs of TechCrunch said "As long as there are folks who think a command line is better than a mouse, the original text-only social network will live on".[60] While there are still some active text newsgroups on Usenet, the system is now primarily used to share large files between users, and the underlying technology of Usenet remains unchanged.[61]

## Usenet traffic changes

Over time, the amount of Usenet traffic has steadily increased. As of 2010[update] the number of all text posts made in all Big-8 newsgroups averaged 1,800 new messages every hour, with an average of 25,000 messages per day.[62] However, these averages are minuscule in comparison to the traffic in the binary groups.[63] Much of this traffic increase reflects not an increase in discrete users or newsgroup discussions, but instead the combination of massive automated spamming and an increase in the use of  newsgroups[62] in which large files are often posted publicly. A small sampling of the change (measured in feed size per day) follows:

right

Source: altopia.com[64] Daily volume | Daily posts | Date

|
|

4.5 GiB |  | 1996 Dec
9 GiB |  | 1997 Jul
12 GiB | 554 k | 1998 Jan
26 GiB | 609 k | 1999 Jan
82 GiB | 858 k | 2000 Jan
181 GiB | 1.24 M | 2001 Jan
257 GiB | 1.48 M | 2002 Jan
492 GiB | 2.09 M | 2003 Jan
969 GiB | 3.30 M | 2004 Jan
1.52 TiB | 5.09 M | 2005 Jan
2.27 TiB | 7.54 M | 2006 Jan
2.95 TiB | 9.84 M | 2007 Jan
3.07 TiB | 10.13 M | 2008 Jan
4.65 TiB | 14.64 M | 2009 Jan
5.42 TiB | 15.66 M | 2010 Jan
7.52 TiB | 20.12 M | 2011 Jan
9.29 TiB | 23.91 M | 2012 Jan
11.49 TiB | 28.14 M | 2013 Jan
14.61 TiB | 37.56 M | 2014 Jan
17.87 TiB | 44.19 M | 2015 Jan
23.87 TiB | 55.59 M | 2016 Jan
27.80 TiB | 64.55 M | 2017 Jan
37.35 TiB | 73.95 M | 2018 Jan
60.38 TiB | 104.04 M | 2019 Jan
62.40 TiB | 107.49 M | 2020 Jan
100.71 TiB | 171.86 M | 2021 Jan
220.00 TiB[65] | 279.16 M | 2023 Aug
274.49 TiB  | 400.24 M  | 2024 Feb

In 2008, Verizon Communications, Time Warner Cable and Sprint Nextel signed an agreement with Attorney General of New York Andrew Cuomo to shut down access to sources of child pornography.[66] Time Warner Cable stopped offering access to Usenet. Verizon reduced its access to the "Big 8" hierarchies. Sprint stopped access to the alt.* hierarchies. AT&T stopped access to the  hierarchies. Cuomo never specifically named Usenet in his anti-child-pornography campaign. David DeJean of PC World said that some worry that the ISPs used Cuomo's campaign as an excuse to end portions of Usenet access, as it is costly for the Internet service providers and not in high demand by customers. In 2008 AOL, which no longer offered Usenet access, and the four providers that responded to the Cuomo campaign were the five largest Internet service providers in the United States; they had more than 50% of the U.S. ISP market share.[67] On June 8, 2009, AT&T announced that it would no longer provide access to the Usenet service as of July 15, 2009.[68]

AOL announced that it would discontinue its integrated Usenet service in early 2005, citing the growing popularity of weblogs, chat forums and on-line conferencing.[69] The AOL community had a tremendous role in popularizing Usenet some 11 years earlier.[70]

In August 2009, Verizon announced that it would discontinue access to Usenet on September 30, 2009.[71][72] JANET announced it would discontinue Usenet service, effective July 31, 2010, citing Google Groups as an alternative.[73] Microsoft announced that it would discontinue support for its public newsgroups (msnews.microsoft.com) from June 1, 2010, offering web forums as an alternative.[74]

Primary reasons cited for the discontinuance of Usenet service by general ISPs include the decline in volume of actual readers due to competition from blogs, along with cost and liability concerns of increasing proportion of traffic devoted to file-sharing and spam on unused or discontinued groups.[75][76]

Some ISPs did not include pressure from Cuomo's campaign against child pornography as one of their reasons for dropping Usenet feeds as part of their services.[77] ISPs Cox and Atlantic Communications resisted the 2008 trend but both did eventually drop their respective Usenet feeds in 2010.[78][79][80]

## Archives

This section possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (June 2026) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

|

Public archives of Usenet articles have existed since the early days of Usenet, such as the system created by Kenneth Almquist in late 1982.[81][82] Distributed archiving of Usenet posts was suggested in November 1982 by Scott Orshan, who proposed that "Every site should keep all the articles it posted, forever."[83] Also in November of that year, Rick Adams responded to a post asking "Has anyone archived netnews, or does anyone plan to?"[84] by stating that he was, "afraid to admit it, but I started archiving most 'useful' newsgroups as of September 18."[85] In June 1982, Gregory G. Woodbury proposed an "automatic access to archives" system that consisted of "automatic answering of fixed-format messages to a special mail recipient on specified machines."[86]

In 1985, two news archiving systems and one RFC were posted to the Internet. The first system, called keepnews, by Mark M. Swenson of the University of Arizona, was described as "a program that attempts to provide a sane way of extracting and keeping information that comes over Usenet." The main advantage of this system was to allow users to mark articles as worthwhile to retain.[87] The second system, YA News Archiver by Chuq Von Rospach, was similar to keepnews, but was "designed to work with much larger archives where the wonderful quadratic search time feature of the Unix ... becomes a real problem."[88] Von Rospach in early 1985 posted a detailed RFC for "archiving and accessing usenet articles with keyword lookup." This RFC described a program that could "generate and maintain an archive of Usenet articles and allow looking up articles based on the article-id, subject lines, or keywords pulled out of the article itself." Also included was C code for the internal data structure of the system.[89]

The desire to have a full text search index of archived news articles is not new either, one such request having been made in April 1991 by Alex Martelli who sought to "build some sort of keyword index for [the news archive]."[90] In early May, Martelli posted a summary of his responses to Usenet, noting that the "most popular suggestion award must definitely go to 'lq-text' package, by Liam Quin, recently posted in alt.sources."[91]

The Alt Sex Stories Text Repository (ASSTR) site archived and indexed erotic and pornographic stories posted to the Usenet group alt.sex.stories.[92]

The archiving of Usenet has led to fears of loss of privacy.[93] An archive simplifies ways to profile people. This has partly been countered with the introduction of the  X-No-Archive: Yes header, which is itself controversial.[94]

### Archives by Deja News and Google Groups

Main article: Software:Google Groups

Web-based archiving of Usenet posts began in March 1995 at Deja News with a very large, searchable database. In February 2001, this database was acquired by Google;[95] Google had begun archiving Usenet posts for itself starting in the second week of August 2000.

Google Groups hosts an archive of Usenet posts dating back to May 1981. The earliest posts, which date from May 1981 to June 1991, were donated to Google by the University of Western Ontario with the help of David Wiseman and others,[96] and were originally archived by Henry Spencer at the University of Toronto's Zoology department.[97] The archives for late 1991 through early 1995 were provided by Kent Landfield from the NetNews CD series[98] and Jürgen Christoffel from GMD.[99]

Google has been criticized by Vice and Wired contributors as well as former employees for its stewardship of the archive and for breaking its search functionality.[100][101][102]

As of January 2024, Google Groups carries a header notice, saying:

> Effective from 22 February 2024, Google Groups will no longer support new Usenet content. Posting and subscribing will be disallowed, and new content from Usenet peers will not appear. Viewing and searching of historical data will still be supported as it is done today.

An explanatory page adds:[103]

> In addition, Google’s Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) server and associated peering will no longer be available, meaning Google will not support serving new Usenet content or exchanging content with other NNTP servers. This change will not impact any non-Usenet content on Google Groups, including all user and organization-created groups.

## See also

* Association for Progressive Communications
* Fediverse
* PLATO Notes
* Open-News-Network e.V.
* Telehack
* Usenet II
* Usenet personality

### Usenet newsreaders

* Newsreader (Usenet)
* Comparison of Usenet newsreaders
* List of Usenet newsreaders

### Usenet/newsgroup service providers

* Astraweb
* Easynews
* Giganews
* Supernews

### Usenet history

* Scientology and the Internet
* Serdar Argic
* Timeline of the history of the Internet

### Usenet administrators

Usenet had administrators on a server-by-server basis, not as a whole. A few famous administrators:

* Chris Lewis
* Gene Spafford, a.k.a. Spaf
* Henry Spencer
* Kai Puolamäki
* Mary Ann Horton

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Hosch, William L.; Gregersen, Erik (2021-05-17). "USENET" (in en). Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/technology/USENET.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 From Usenet to CoWebs: interacting with social information spaces, Christopher Lueg, Danyel Fisher, Springer (2003), ISBN 1-85233-532-7, ISBN 978-1-85233-532-8
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 The jargon file v4.4.7 , Jargon File Archive.
4. ↑ Chapter 3 - The Social Forces Behind The Development of Usenet , Netizens Netbook by Ronda Hauben and Michael Hauben.
5. ↑ "USENET Newsgroup Terms – SPAM". http://www.newsdemon.com/usenet_term_spam.php.
6. ↑ Pre-Internet; Usenet needing "just local telephone service" in most larger towns, depends on the number of local dial-up FidoNet "nodes" operated free of charge by hobbyist "SysOps" (as FidoNet echomail variations or via gateways with the Usenet news hierarchy. This is virtual Usenet or newsgroups access, not true Usenet.) The participating SysOps typically carry 6–30 Usenet newsgroups each, and will often add another on request. If a desired newsgroup was not available locally, a user would need to dial to another city to download the desired news and upload one's own posts. In all cases it is desirable to hang up as soon as possible and read/write offline, making "newsreader" software commonly used to automate the process. Fidonet, bbscorner.com
fidonet.org, Randy_Bush.txt
7. ↑ Bonnett, Cara (May 17, 2010). "Duke to shut Usenet server, home to the first electronic newsgroups". Duke University. https://today.duke.edu/2010/05/usenet.html.
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 Emerson, Sandra L. (October 1983). "Usenet / A Bulletin Board for Unix Users". BYTE: pp. 219–236. https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1983-10/1983_10_BYTE_08-10_UNIX#page/n219/mode/2up.
9. ↑ "Invitation to a General Access UNIX Network ", James Ellis and Tom Truscott, in First Official Announcement of USENET, NewsDemon (K&L Technologies, Inc), 1979
10. ↑ Lehnert, Wendy G.; Kopec, Richard (2007). Web 101. Addison Wesley. p. 291. ISBN 9780321424679
11. ↑ "Store And Forward Communication: UUCP and FidoNet". https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dga/15-849/store_and_forward.html. . Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science.
12. ↑ Kozierok, Charles M. (2005). The TCP/IP guide: a comprehensive, illustrated Internet protocols reference. No Starch Press. p. 1401. ISBN 978-159327-047-6
13. ↑ One way to virtually read and participate in Usenet newsgroups using an ordinary Internet browser is to do an internet search on a known newsgroup, such as the high-volume forum "sci.physics". Retrieved April 28, 2019
14. ↑ "Best Usenet clients". UsenetReviewz. https://usenetreviewz.com/best-usenet-clients/.
15. ↑ "Tree" (in en). https://usenet.rexum.space/tree.
16. ↑ "Open Directory Usenet Clients". Dmoz.org. October 9, 2008. http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Internet/Clients/Usenet/.
17. ↑ Jain, Dominik (July 30, 2006). "OE-QuoteFix Description". http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/.
18. ↑ "Improve-Usenet". October 13, 2008. http://improve-usenet.org.
19. ↑ "Improve-Usenet Comments". October 13, 2008. http://improve-usenet.org/voices1.html.
20. ↑ "Google Groups". http://groups.google.com/.
21. ↑ "News: links to Google Groups". http://mykzilla.blogspot.com/2008/11/news-links-to-google-groups.html.
22. ↑ "Who can force the moderators to obey the group charter?". Big-8.org. https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Moderated_Newsgroups#Who_can_force_the_moderators_to_obey_the_group_charter.3F.
23. ↑ "How does a group change moderators?". Big-8.org. https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Moderated_Newsgroups#How_does_a_group_change_moderators.3F.
24. ↑ "Early Usenet Newsgroup Hierarchies". Livinginternet.com. October 25, 1990. http://www.livinginternet.com/u/ui_early.htm.
25. ↑ "How to Create a New Big-8 Newsgroup". Big-8.org. July 7, 2010. http://www.big-8.org/wiki/How_to_Create_a_New_Big-8_Newsgroup.
26. ↑ Donath, Judith (2014-05-23). The Social Machine: Designs for Living Online. MIT Press. ISBN 9780262027014. https://books.google.com/books?id=TxaoAwAAQBAJ&q=usenet spam prevalence&pg=PA168. Retrieved November 7, 2020. "Today, Usenet still exists, but it is an unsociable morass of spam, porn, and pirated software"
27. ↑ "Unraveling the Internet's oldest and weirdest mystery". The Kernel. 2015-03-22. http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/12223/markovian-parallax-denigrate-usenet-spam/. "Groups filled with spam, massive fights took place against spammers and over what to do about the spam. People stopped using their email addresses in messages to avoid harvesting. People left the net."
28. ↑ "The American Way of Spam". http://partners.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/05/circuits/articles/07spam.html. "...many of the newsgroups have since been overrun with junk messages."
29. ↑ Microsoft Responds to the Evolution of Communities , Announcement, undated. "Microsoft hitting 'unsubscribe' on newsgroups". CNET. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20004109-56.html. , CNET, May 4, 2010.
30. ↑ Gregersen, Erik; Hosch, William L. (2022-02-17). "newsgroup" (in en). Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/technology/newsgroup.
31. ↑ "Usenet storage is more than 60 petabytes (60000 terabytes)". binsearch.info. https://www.binsearch.info/groupinfo.php.
32. ↑ "usenet backup (uBackup)". wikiHow. Wikihow.com. http://www.wikihow.com/Backup-Your-Data-on-Usenet-(Ubackup).
33. ↑ "Eweka 4446 Days Retention". Eweka.nl. https://www.eweka.nl/en.
34. ↑ "Digital Millenium Copyright Act". http://www.supernews.com/docs/dmca.html.
35. ↑ "Cancel Messages FAQ". https://wiki.killfile.org/projects/usenet/faqs/cancel/. "...Until authenticated cancels catch on, there are no options to avoid forged cancels and allow unforged ones..."
36. ↑ Microsoft knowledgebase article stating that many servers ignore cancel messages "Support.microsoft.com". http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q164420/.
37. ↑ "Microsoft Word - Surmacz.doc". http://www.measurement.sk/2005/S1/Surmacz.pdf.
38. ↑ ...every part of a Usenet post may be forged apart from the left most portion of the "Path:" header... "By-users.co.uk". http://www.by-users.co.uk/faqs/email/headers/.
39. ↑ "Better living through forgery". Newsgroup: news.admin.misc. 1995-06-10. Usenet: StUPidfuk01@uunet.uu.net. Archived from the original on 2012-07-24. Retrieved December 5, 2014.
40. ↑ "Giganews Privacy Policy". Giganews.com. http://www.giganews.com/legal/privacy.html.
41. ↑ "Privacy Policy UsenetServer". Usenetserver.com. https://www.usenetserver.com/privacy-policy.
42. ↑ "Logging Policy". Aioe.org. June 9, 2005. http://aioe.org/index.php?logging-policy.
43. ↑ "Quux.org". http://quux.org:70/Archives/usenet-a-news/NET.general/81.12.14_azure.300_net.general,fa.unix-wizards.txt.
44. ↑ LaQuey, Tracy (1990). The User's directory of computer networks. Digital Press. p. 386. ISBN 978-1555580476
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47. ↑ Hauben, Michael and Hauben, Ronda. "Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet, On the Early Days of Usenet: The Roots of the Cooperative Online Culture ". First Monday vol. 3 num.August 8, 3 1998
48. ↑ Haddadi, H. (2006). "Network Traffic Inference Using Sampled Statistics ". University College London.
49. ↑ Horton, Mark (December 11, 1990). "Arachnet". http://communication.ucsd.edu/bjones/Usenet.Hist/Nethist/0111.html.
50. ↑ Huston, Geoff (1999). ISP survival guide: strategies for running a competitive ISP. Wiley. p. 439.
51. ↑ "Unix/Linux news servers". Newsreaders.com. http://www.newsreaders.com/unix/servers.html.
52. ↑ Tim Berners-Lee (August 6, 1991). "WorldWideWeb: Summary". Newsgroup: alt.hypertext. Usenet: 6487@cernvax.cern.ch. Archived from the original on June 2, 2013. Retrieved June 4, 2007.
53. ↑ Torvalds, Linus. "What would you like to see most in minix?". Newsgroup: comp.os.minix. Usenet: 1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava.Helsinki.FI. Archived from the original on October 27, 2006. Retrieved September 9, 2006.
54. ↑ Marc Andreessen (March 15, 1993). "NCSA Mosaic for X 0.10 available". Newsgroup: comp.windows.x. Usenet: MARCA.93Mar14225600@wintermute.ncsa.uiuc.edu. Archived from the original on June 16, 2006. Retrieved June 4, 2007.
55. ↑ Kaltenbach, Susan (December 2000). "The Evolution of the Online Discourse Community". http://noonuniverse.com/Linked_work/online_discourse.pdf. ""Verb Doubling: Doubling a verb may change its semantics, Soundalike Slang: Punning jargon, The -P convention: A LISPy way to form questions, Overgeneralization: Standard abuses of grammar, Spoken Inarticulations: Sighing and <*sigh*>ing, Anthropomorphization: online components were named "Homunculi," daemons," etc., and there were also "confused" programs. Comparatives: Standard comparatives for design quality""
56. ↑ Campbell, K. K. (October 1, 1994). "Chatting With Martha Siegel of the Internet's Infamous Canter & Siegel". Electronic Frontier Foundation. http://w2.eff.org/legal/cases/Canter_Siegel/c-and-s_summary.article.
57. ↑ Segan, Sascha (July 31, 2008). "R.I.P Usenet: 1980-2008" (in en). PC Magazine. https://www.pcmag.com/archive/rip-usenet-1980-2008-230383.
58. ↑ Cara Bonnett (May 17, 2010). "A Piece of Internet History". Duke Today. https://today.duke.edu/2010/05/usenet.html.
59. ↑ Andrew Orlowski (May 20, 2010). "Usenet's home shuts down today". The Register. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/20/usenet_duke_server/.
60. ↑ ""Reports of Usenet's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated". https://techcrunch.com/2008/08/01/the-reports-of-usenets-death-are-greatly-exaggerated/. ." TechCrunch. August 1, 2008. Retrieved on May 8, 2011.
61. ↑ "What Is Usenet". https://top10usenet.com/guides/what-is-usenet/.
62. ↑ 62.0 62.1 "Top 100 text newsgroups by postings". NewsAdmin. http://www.newsadmin.com/top100tmsgs.asp.
63. ↑ "Top 100 binary newsgroups by postings". NewsAdmin. http://www.newsadmin.com/top100bmsgs.asp.
64. ↑ "Usenet Piracy" (in en-US). https://www.iparrow.com/usenet-piracy/.
65. ↑ "Usenet Newsgroup Feed Size - NewsDemon Usenet Newsgroup Access". https://www.newsdemon.com/usenet-newsgroup-feed-size.
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92. ↑ "Asstr.org". http://asstr.org/.
93. ↑ Segan, Sascha (2008-07-31). "R.I.P Usenet: 1980–2008 – Usenet's Decline – Columns by PC Magazine". Pcmag.com. https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2326849,00.asp.
94. ↑ Strawbridge, Matthew (2006). Netiquette: Internet Etiquette in the Age of the Blog. Software Reference. p. 53. ISBN 978-0955461408
95. ↑ Cullen, Drew (February 12, 2001). "Google saves Deja.com Usenet service". https://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/02/12/google_saves_deja_com_usenet/. . The Register.
96. ↑ Wiseman, David. "Magi's NetNews Archive Involvement" , csd.uwo.ca.
97. ↑ Mieszkowski, Katharine. ""The Geeks Who Saved Usenet". http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/01/07/saving_usenet/index.html. ", archive.salon.com (January 7, 2002).
98. ↑ Feldman, Ian. "Usenet on a CD-ROM, no longer a fable". February 10, 1992. http://db.tidbits.com/article/3229. , "TidBITS" (February 10, 1992)
99. ↑ "Google Groups Archive Information". http://groups.google.com/group/news.admin.misc/msg/6dec509043e7b3c7?dmode=source&output=gplain. (December 21, 2001)
100. ↑ Poulsen, Kevin (2009-10-07). "Google's Abandoned Library of 700 Million Titles". Wired. https://www.wired.com/2009/10/usenet. Retrieved March 12, 2017.
101. ↑ Braga, Matthew (2015-02-13). "Google, a Search Company, Has Made Its Internet Archive Impossible to Search". https://www.vice.com/en/article/google-a-search-company-has-made-its-internet-archive-impossible-to-search/.
102. ↑ Edwards, Douglas (2011). I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. pp. 209–213. ISBN 978-0-547-41699-1. https://archive.org/details/imfeelingluckyco00edwa/page/209.
103. ↑ "Google Groups ending support for Usenet - Google Groups Help". https://support.google.com/groups/answer/11036538?visit_id=638401644159352995-1779246639.

## Further reading

* Bruce Jones (July 1, 1997). "USENET History mailing list archive covering 1990-1997". https://shikan.org/bjones/Usenet.Hist/Nethist/.
* Hauben, Michael; Hauben, Ronda; Truscott, Tom (April 27, 1997). Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet (Perspectives). Wiley-IEEE Computer Society P. ISBN 978-0-8186-7706-9. http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/. Retrieved June 6, 2015.
* Bryan Pfaffenberger (December 31, 1994). The USENET Book: Finding, Using, and Surviving Newsgroups on the Internet. Addison Wesley. ISBN 978-0-201-40978-9.
* Kate Gregory; Jim Mann; Tim Parker; Noel Estabrook (June 1995). Using Usenet Newsgroups. Que. ISBN 978-0-7897-0134-3. https://archive.org/details/usingusenetnewsg0000esta.
* Mark Harrison (July 1995). The USENET Handbook (Nutshell Handbook). O'Reilly. ISBN 978-1-56592-101-6.
* Spencer, Henry; David Lawrence (January 1998). Managing Usenet. O'Reilly. ISBN 978-1-56592-198-6. https://archive.org/details/managingusenet00spen.
* Don Rittner (June 1997). Rittner's Field Guide to Usenet. MNS Publishing. ISBN 978-0-937666-50-0.
* Konstan, J.; Miller, B.; Maltz, D. (March 1997). "GroupLens: applying collaborative filtering to Usenet news". Communications of the ACM 40 (3): 77–87. doi:10.1145/245108.245126.
* Miller, B.; Riedl, J.; Konstan, J. (January 1997). "Experiences with GroupLens: Making Usenet useful again". Proceedings of the 1997 Usenix Winter Technical Conference. http://www.grouplens.org/papers/pdf/usenix97.pdf. Retrieved December 13, 2005.
* "20 Year Usenet Timeline". https://www.google.com/googlegroups/archive_announce_20.html.
* Schwartz, Randal (June 15, 2006). "Web 2.0, Meet Usenet 1.0". Linux Magazine. http://www.linux-mag.com/id/2675/.
* Kleiner, Dmytri; Wyrick, Brian (January 29, 2007). "InfoEnclosure 2.0". http://www.metamute.org/InfoEnclosure-2.0.

## External links

* IETF working group USEFOR (USEnet article FORmat), tools.ietf.org
* A-News Archive: Early Usenet news articles: 1981 to 1982., quux.org
* "Netscan". https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/scg/. Social Accounting Reporting Tool
* Living Internet A comprehensive history of the Internet, including Usenet. livinginternet.com
* Usenet Glossary A comprehensive list of Usenet terminology
* Usenet free servers A list of free providers of Usenet server access

* v
* t
* e

Usenet

History|

* Great Renaming (1987)
* Eternal September (1993)
* Meow Wars (1996–1998)

Terminology|

* Cancelbot
* Cleanfeed
* Plonk
* Sporgery
* Usenet Death Penalty

Hierarchies|

* alt.*
* Big 8
* comp.*
* sci.*

Newsgroups (List)|

| alt.*|

* atheism
* religion.scientology
* sex
* sex.stories
* suicide.holiday
* tv.simpsons
* usage.english

|

By topic|

* Cryptography newsgroups

Clients|

* Google Groups

| Newsreaders (List, Comparison)|

* GrabIt
* NewsBin Pro

|

This list is incomplete.

* v
* t
* e

Computer-mediated communication

* Online chat
* Online discussion
* Communication software
* Collaborative software
* Social network service
* Virtual learning environment

Asynchronous conferencing|

* Email
* Electronic mailing list
* FidoNet
* Usenet
* Internet forum
* Textboard
* Imageboard
* Shoutbox
* Bulletin board system
* Online guestbook

Synchronous conferencing|

* Data conferencing
* Instant messaging
* Internet Relay Chat
* LAN messenger
* Talker
* Videoconferencing
* Voice over IP
* Voice chat in online gaming
* Web chat
* Web conferencing

Publishing|

* Blog
* Microblogging
* Wiki

Short description: Practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information

Part of a series on

File sharing
Technologies

* File hosting services
* Online video platform
* Peer to peer
* Usenet
* Web hosting
* WebRTC
* XDCC

Video sharing sites

* 123Movies
* Dailymotion
* Putlocker
* YouTube

BitTorrent sites

* 1337x
* Demonoid
* ExtraTorrent
* EZTV
* isoHunt
* KickassTorrents
* Nyaa Torrents
* RARBG
* Tamil Rockers
* The Pirate Bay
* YIFY

Academic/scholarly

* ICanHazPDF
* Internet Archive
* Library Genesis
* Sci-Hub

File sharing networks

* BitTorrent
* Direct Connect
* eDonkey
* Freenet
* Gnutella
* Gnutella2
* I2P
* list
* OpenNap
* WebTorrent

P2P clients

* BitComet
* DC++
* Deluge
* eMule
* μTorrent
* qBittorrent
* Shareaza
* Soulseek
* Transmission
* Tribler
* Vuze
* WinMX

Streaming programs

* Butter Project
* Kodi
* Popcorn Time
* Torrents-Time

Anonymous file sharing

* Anonymous P2P
* Darknet
* Friend-to-friend
* Private P2P
* Proxy server
* Seedbox
* VPN

Development and societal aspects

* Timeline
* Legality
* BitTorrent issues

By country or region

* Canada
* Japan
* Singapore
* UK
* US

Comparisons

* Comparison of BitTorrent clients
* Comparison of BitTorrent sites
* Comparison of eDonkey software
* Comparison of Internet Relay Chat clients
* Comparison of Usenet newsreaders

* v
* t
* e

File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include removable media, centralized servers on computer networks, Internet-based hyperlinked documents, and the use of distributed peer-to-peer networking.

File sharing technologies, such as BitTorrent, are integral to modern media piracy, as well as the sharing of scientific data and other free content.

## History

For a chronological guide to this subject, see Timeline of Usenet.

Files were first exchanged on removable media. Computers were able to access remote files using filesystem mounting, bulletin board systems (1978), Usenet (1979), and FTP servers (1970's). Internet Relay Chat (1988) and Hotline (1997) enabled users to communicate remotely through chat and to exchange files. The mp3 encoding, which was standardized in 1991 and substantially reduced the size of audio files, grew to widespread use in the late 1990s. In 1998, MP3.com and Audiogalaxy were established, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was unanimously passed, and the first mp3 player devices were launched.[1]

In June 1999, Napster was released as an unstructured centralized peer-to-peer system,[2] requiring a central server for indexing and peer discovery. It is generally credited as being the first peer-to-peer file sharing system. In December 1999, Napster was sued by several recording companies and lost in A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc..[3] In the case of Napster, it has been ruled that 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.[4]

Gnutella, eDonkey2000, and Freenet were released in 2000, as MP3.com and Napster were facing litigation. Gnutella, released in March, was the first decentralized file-sharing network. In the Gnutella network, all connecting software was considered equal, and therefore the network had no central point of failure. In July, Freenet was released and became the first anonymity network. In September the eDonkey2000 client and server software was released.[citation needed]

In March 2001, Kazaa was released. Its FastTrack network was distributed, though, unlike Gnutella, it assigned more traffic to 'supernodes' to increase routing efficiency. The network was proprietary and encrypted, and the Kazaa team made substantial efforts to keep other clients such as Morpheus off of the FastTrack network.[citation needed] In October 2001, the MPAA and the RIAA filed a lawsuit against the developers of Kazaa, Morpheus and Grokster[5][6] that would lead to the US Supreme Court's MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. decision in 2005.

Shortly after its loss in court, Napster was shut down to comply with a court order. This drove users to other P2P applications and file sharing continued its growth.[7] The Audiogalaxy Satellite client grew in popularity, and the LimeWire client and BitTorrent protocol were released. Until its decline in 2004, Kazaa was the most popular file-sharing program despite bundled malware and legal battles in the Netherlands, Australia, and the United States. In 2002, a Tokyo district court ruling shut down File Rogue, and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed a lawsuit that effectively shut down Audiogalaxy.

Demonstrators protesting The Pirate Bay raid in 2006

From 2002 through 2003, a number of BitTorrent services were established, including Suprnova.org, isoHunt, TorrentSpy, and The Pirate Bay. In September 2003, the RIAA began filing lawsuits against users of P2P file sharing networks such as Kazaa.[8] As a result of such lawsuits, many universities added file sharing regulations in their school administrative codes (though some students managed to circumvent them during after school hours). Also in 2003, the MPAA started to take action against BitTorrent sites, leading to the shutdown of Torrentse and Sharelive in July 2003.[9] With the shutdown of eDonkey in 2005, eMule became the dominant client of the eDonkey network. In 2006, police raids took down the Razorback2 eDonkey server and temporarily took down The Pirate Bay.[10]

"The File Sharing Act was launched by Chairman Towns in 2009, this act prohibited the use of applications that allowed individuals to share federal information amongst one another. On the other hand, only specific file sharing applications were made available to federal computers" (the United States.Congress.House). In 2009, the Pirate Bay trial ended in a guilty verdict for the primary founders of the tracker. The decision was appealed, leading to a second guilty verdict in November 2010. In October 2010, Limewire was forced to shut down following a court order in Arista Records LLC v. Lime Group LLC but the Gnutella network remains active through open source clients like FrostWire and gtk-gnutella. Furthermore, multi-protocol file-sharing software such as MLDonkey and Shareaza adapted to support all the major file-sharing protocols, so users no longer had to install and configure multiple file-sharing programs.[citation needed]

On January 19, 2012, the United States Department of Justice shut down the popular domain of Megaupload (established 2005). The file sharing site has claimed to have over 50,000,000 people a day.[11] Kim Dotcom (formerly Kim Schmitz) was arrested with three associates in New Zealand on January 20, 2012 and is awaiting extradition.[12][13] The case involving the downfall of the world's largest and most popular file sharing site was not well received, with hacker group Anonymous bringing down several sites associated with the take-down.[11] In the following days, other file sharing sites began to cease services; FileSonic blocked public downloads on January 22,[14] with Fileserve following suit on January 23.[15]

In 2021 a European Citizens' Initiative "Freedom to Share" started collecting signatures in order to get the European Commission to discuss (and eventually make rules) on this subject, which is controversial.[16]

### Techniques used for video sharing

From the early 2000s until the mid 2010s, online video streaming was usually based on the Adobe Flash Player. After more and more vulnerabilities in Adobe's flash became known, YouTube switched to HTML5 based video playback in January 2015.[17]

## Types

### Peer-to-peer file sharing

Peer-to-peer file sharing is based on the peer-to-peer (P2P) application architecture. Shared files on the computers of other users are indexed on directory servers. P2P technology was used by popular services like Napster and LimeWire. The most popular protocol for P2P sharing is BitTorrent.

### File sync and sharing services

Screenshot of an open-source file-sharing software Shareaza

Cloud-based file syncing and sharing services implement automated file transfers by updating files from a dedicated sharing directory on each user's networked devices. Files placed in this folder also are typically accessible through a website and mobile app and can be easily shared with other users for viewing or collaboration. Such services have become popular via consumer-oriented file hosting services such as Dropbox and Google Drive. With the rising need of sharing big files online easily, new open access sharing platforms have appeared, adding even more services to their core business (cloud storage, multi-device synchronization, online collaboration), such as ShareFile, Tresorit, WeTransfer, or Hightail.

rsync is a more traditional program released in 1996 which synchronizes files on a direct machine-to-machine basis.

Data synchronization in general can use other approaches to share files, such as distributed file systems, version control, or mirrors.

## Academic file sharing

In addition to file sharing for the purposes of entertainment, academic file sharing has become a topic of increasing concern,[18][19][20] as it is deemed to be a violation of academic integrity at many schools.[18][19][21] Academic file sharing by companies such as Chegg and Course Hero has become a point of particular controversy in recent years.[22] This has led some institutions to provide explicit guidance to students and faculty regarding academic integrity expectations relating to academic file sharing.[23][24]

## Public opinion of file sharing

In 2004, there were an estimated 70 million people participating in online file sharing.[25] According to a CBS News poll in 2009, 58% of United States who follow the file-sharing issue, considered it acceptable "if a person owns the music CD and shares it with a limited number of friends and acquaintances"; with 18- to 29-year-olds, this percentage reached as much as 70%.[26]

In his survey of file-sharing culture, Caraway (2012) noted that 74.4% of participants believed musicians should accept file sharing as a means for promotion and distribution.[27] This file-sharing culture was termed as cyber socialism, whose legalisation was not the expected cyber-utopia.[clarification needed].[28][29]

## Economic impact

According to David Glenn, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, "A majority of economic studies have concluded that file-sharing hurts sales".[30] A literature review by Professor Peter Tschmuck found 22 independent studies on the effects of music file sharing. "Of these 22 studies, 14 – roughly two-thirds – conclude that unauthorized downloads have a 'negative or even highly negative impact' on recorded music sales. Three of the studies found no significant impact while the remaining five found a positive impact."[31][32]

A study by economists Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf in 2004 concluded that music file sharing's effect on sales was "statistically indistinguishable from zero".[33][34] This research was disputed by other economists, most notably Stan Liebowitz, who said Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf had made multiple assumptions about the music industry "that are just not correct."[33][35] In June 2010, Billboard reported that Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf had "changed their minds", now finding "no more than 20% of the recent decline in sales is due to sharing".[36] However, citing Nielsen SoundScan as their source, the co-authors maintained that illegal downloading had not deterred people from being original. "In many creative industries, monetary incentives play a reduced role in motivating authors to remain creative. Data on the supply of new works are consistent with the argument that file-sharing did not discourage authors and publishers. Since the advent of file sharing, the production of music, books, and movies has increased sharply."[37] Glenn Peoples of Billboard disputed the underlying data, saying "SoundScan's number for new releases in any given year represents new commercial titles, not necessarily new creative works."[38] The RIAA likewise responded that "new releases" and "new creative works" are two separate things. "[T]his figure includes re-releases, new compilations of existing songs, and new digital-only versions of catalog albums. SoundScan has also steadily increased the number of retailers (especially non-traditional retailers) in their sample over the years, better capturing the number of new releases brought to market. What Oberholzer and Strumpf found was better ability to track new album releases, not greater incentive to create them."[39]

A 2006 study prepared by Birgitte Andersen and Marion Frenz, published by Industry Canada, was "unable to discover any direct relationship between P2P file-sharing and CD purchases in Canada".[40] The results of this survey were similarly criticized by academics and a subsequent revaluation of the same data by George R. Barker of the Australian National University reached the opposite conclusion.[41] "In total, 75% of P2P downloaders responded that if P2P were not available they would have purchased either through paid sites only (9%), CDs only (17%) or through CDs and pay sites (49%). Only 25% of people say they would not have bought the music if it were not available on P2P for free." Barker thus concludes; "This clearly suggests P2P network availability is reducing music demand of 75% of music downloaders which is quite contrary to Andersen and Frenz's much published claim."[42]

According to the 2017 paper "Estimating displacement rates of copyrighted content in the EU" by the European Commission, illegal usage increases game sales, stating "The overall conclusion is that for games, illegal online transactions induce more legal transactions."[43]

### Market dominance

A paper in the journal Management Science found that file-sharing decreased the chance of survival for low ranked albums on music charts and increased exposure to albums that were ranked high on the music charts, allowing popular and well-known artists to remain on the music charts more often. This hurt new and less-known artists while promoting the work of already popular artists and celebrities.[44]

A more recent study that examined pre-release file-sharing of music albums, using BitTorrent software, also discovered positive impacts for "established and popular artists but not newer and smaller artists." According to Robert G. Hammond of North Carolina State University, an album that leaked one month early would see a modest increase in sales. "This increase in sales is small relative to other factors that have been found to affect album sales."

> "File-sharing proponents commonly argue that file-sharing democratizes music consumption by 'levelling the playing field' for new/small artists relative to established/popular artists, by allowing artists to have their work heard by a wider audience, lessening the advantage held by established/popular artists in terms of promotional and other support. My results suggest that the opposite is happening, which is consistent with evidence on file-sharing behaviour."[45]

Billboard cautioned that this research looked only at the pre-release period and not continuous file sharing following a release date. "The problem in believing piracy helps sales is deciding where to draw the line between legal and illegal ... Implicit in the study is the fact that both buyers and sellers are required in order for pre-release file sharing to have a positive impact on album sales. Without iTunes, Amazon, and Best Buy, file-sharers would be just file sharers rather than purchasers. If you carry out the 'file-sharing should be legal' argument to its logical conclusion, today's retailers will be tomorrow's file-sharing services that integrate with their respective cloud storage services."[46]

### Availability

Many argue that file-sharing has forced the owners of entertainment content to make it more widely available legally through fees or advertising on-demand on the internet. In a 2011 report by Sandvine showed that Netflix traffic had come to surpass that of BitTorrent.[47]

## Copyright issues

Main article: Legal aspects of file sharing

File sharing raises copyright issues and has led to many lawsuits. In the United States , some of these lawsuits have even reached the Supreme Court. For example, in MGM v. Grokster, the Supreme Court ruled that the creators of P2P networks can be held liable if their software is marketed as a tool for copyright infringement.

On the other hand, not all file sharing is illegal. Content in the public domain can be freely shared. Even works covered by copyright can be shared under certain circumstances. For example, some artists, publishers, and record labels grant the public a license for unlimited distribution of certain works, sometimes with conditions, and they advocate free content and file sharing as a promotional tool.[48]

## See also

* Comparison of file sharing applications
* File hosting service
* Graduated response
* Love for Sale (Bilal album), an unreleased but infamously pirated album by Bilal[49]
* Missionary Church of Kopimism
* Open Music Model
* Publius (publishing system)
* Torrent poisoning
* Trade group efforts against file sharing
* Warez

## References

1. ↑ Adner, Ron (2012-03-05). "From Walkman to iPod: What Music Tech Teaches Us About Innovation" (in en). https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/from-walkman-to-ipod-what-music-tech-teaches-us-about-innovation/253158/.
2. ↑ Elser, Amy (March 25, 2005). Reliable distributed systems: technologies, Web services, and applications - Kenneth P. Birman - Google Books. Springer. ISBN 9780387215099. https://books.google.com/books?id=KeIENcC2BPwC&q=napster+first&pg=PA532. Retrieved January 20, 2012.
3. ↑ Menta, Richard (December 9, 1999). "RIAA Sues Music Startup Napster for $20 Billion". MP3 Newswire. http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/napster.html.
4. ↑ "EFF: What Peer-to-Peer Developers Need to Know about Copyright Law". W2.eff.org. http://w2.eff.org/IP/P2P/p2p_copyright_wp.php.
5. ↑ Woody, Todd (February 1, 2003). "The Race to Kill Kazaa". Wired. https://www.wired.com/2003/02/kazaa/.
6. ↑ Menta, Richard (October 3, 2001). "RIAA and MPAA sue Morpheus, Grokster and KaZaa". MP3 Newswire. http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/sue_morpheus.html.
7. ↑ Menta, Richard (July 20, 2001). "Napster Clones Crush Napster. Take 6 out of the Top 10 Downloads on CNet". MP3 Newswire. http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/topclones.html.
8. ↑ Dean, Katie (September 8, 2003). "RIAA Legal Landslide Begins". Wired. https://www.wired.com/2003/09/riaa-legal-landslide-begins/. Retrieved November 1, 2019.
9. ↑ Röttgers, Janko (July 26, 2003). "Bittorrent-Webseiten unter Druck" (in de). heise online. https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Bittorrent-Webseiten-unter-Druck-82795.html.
10. ↑ Motion Picture Association. "BELGIAN & SWISS AUTHORITIES BREAK RAZORBACK2: World’s Largest P2P Facilitator Put Out of Illegal Business". https://web.archive.org/web/20060415024031/http://www.mpaa.org/press_releases/2006_02_21_razer.pdf.
11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Mufson, Steven (January 20, 2012). "Department of Justice site hacked after Megaupload shutdown, Anonymous claims credit. Washington Post". Washingtonpost.com. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/department-of-justice-site-hacked-after-megaupload-shutdown-anonymous-claims-credit/2012/01/20/gIQAl5MNEQ_story.html?tid=pm_business_pop.
12. ↑ Schneider, Joe (January 24, 2012). "Megaupload's Dotcom in Custody as New Zealand Awaits Extradition Request, Bloomberg". Bloomberg.com. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-24/megaupload-s-dotcom-in-custody-as-new-zealand-awaits-extradition-request.html.
13. ↑ Leask, Anna (23 January 2012). "Dotcom in custody ahead of bail decision". The New Zealand Herald. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10780553.
14. ↑ Musil, Steven. "FileSonic disables file sharing in wake of MegaUpload arrests". CNET. https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/filesonic-disables-file-sharing-in-wake-of-megaupload-arrests/.
15. ↑ Lanxon, Nate. "Filesonic, Fileserve pull file-sharing services following Megaupload arrests". Condé Nast Britain. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/filesonic-file-sharing-offline.
16. ↑ Ernesto Van der Sar (2020-12-17). ""Freedom to Share" Launches EU Citizens' Initiative to Legalize File-Sharing". https://torrentfreak.com/freedom-to-share-launches-eu-citizens-initiative-to-legalize-filesharing-201217/.
17. ↑ McCormick, Rich (2015-01-27). "YouTube drops Flash for HTML5 video as default" (in en). https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/27/7926001/youtube-drops-flash-for-html5-video-default.
18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Rogerson, A.M. (2014). Detecting the work of essay mills and file swapping sites: some clues they leave behind. Semantic Scholar.
19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Rogerson, A.M.; Basanta, G. (5 February 2016). "Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and Academic Integrity in the Internet Age". Handbook of Academic Integrity. Springer Nature. pp. 273–285. doi:10.1007/978-981-287-098-8_55. ISBN 978-981-287-098-8. https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-981-287-098-8_55. Retrieved 13 December 2023.
20. ↑ Eaton, S.E. (12 July 2020). "Academic Integrity During COVID-19: Reflections From the University of Calgary". International Studies in Educational Administration (Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration and Management) 48 (1): 80–85. https://prism.ucalgary.ca/items/3817c241-3d4b-433e-b424-e955e81c0b48. Retrieved 13 December 2023.
21. ↑ Butler, J. (15 April 2020). "Arts & Sciences investigates Physics 192 academic integrity breach". Washington University Student Media, Inc.. https://www.studlife.com/news/2020/04/15/arts-sciences-investigates-physics-192-academic-integrity-breach.
22. ↑ McKenzie, L. (13 May 2018). "Learning Tool or Cheating Aid?". Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/05/14/professors-warned-about-popular-learning-tool-used-students-cheat.
23. ↑ "Information for Faculty: Note-sharing sites". Sheridan College. https://sheridancollege.libguides.com/ld.php?content_id=34999338.
24. ↑ "Copyright for Students". Sheridan College. 30 July 2023. https://sheridancollege.libguides.com/copyright_students/home.
25. ↑ Delgado, Ray (March 17, 2004). "Law professors examine ethical controversies of peer-to-peer file sharing". Stanford Report. Stanford University. http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2004/march17/fileshare-317.html.
26. ↑ "Poll: Young Say File Sharing OK". CBS News. February 11, 2009. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/18/opinion/polls/main573990.shtml.
27. ↑ Caraway, Brett Robert (2012). "Survey of File-Sharing Culture". USC Annenberg Press, Creative Commons license (by-nc-nd). http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/1216/720.
28. ↑ Filby, Michael (2011). "Regulating File Sharing: Open Regulations for an Open Internet". Journal of International Commercial Law and Technology 6: 207. https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/jcolate6&div=24&id=&page=. Retrieved 28 December 2021.
29. ↑ Filby, Michael (1 January 2008). "Together in electric dreams: cyber socialism, utopia and the creative commons". International Journal of Private Law 1 (1–2): 94–109. doi:10.1504/IJPL.2008.019435. ISSN 1753-6235. https://www.inderscienceonline.com/doi/abs/10.1504/IJPL.2008.019435. Retrieved 28 December 2021.
30. ↑ Glenn, David (July 17, 2008). "Dispute Over the Economics of File Sharing Intensifies". The Chronicle of Higher Education (Washington, D. C.). https://www.chronicle.com/article/dispute-over-the-economics-of-file-sharing-intensifies-989/.
31. ↑ Hart, Terry. More Evidence for Copyright Protection , copyhype.com, February 1, 2012. "The literature review looked at a 23rd study but did not classify it here since the author presented a mixed conclusion: the overall effect of unauthorized downloads is insignificant, but for unknown artists, there is a 'strongly negative' effect on recorded music sales."
32. ↑ AJ Sokolov, Daniel . Wissenschaftler: Studien über Tauschbörsen unbrauchbar , c't magazine, June 11, 2010.
33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 Levine, Robert. Free Ride: How the Internet Is Destroying the Culture Business and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back, Bodley Head, February 2011, ISBN 1847921485.
34. ↑ Oberholzer, Felix; Koleman Strumpf. "The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis". http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf.
35. ↑ Liebowitz, Stan J. (23 September 2007). "How Reliable is the Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf Paper on File-Sharing?". Intellectual Property: Copyright Law eJournal (ResearchGate GmbH). doi:10.2139/ssrn.1014399. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228172429. Retrieved 13 December 2023.
36. ↑ Peoples, Glenn. Researchers Change Tune, Now Say P2P Has Negative Impact  Billboard. June 22, 2010.
37. ↑ Oberholzer & Strumpf. "File Sharing and Copyright" NBER Innovation Policy & the Economy, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2010. "Artists receive a significant portion of their remuneration not in monetary form – many of them enjoy fame, admiration, social status, and free beer in bars – suggesting a reduction in monetary incentives might possibly have a reduced impact on the quantity and quality of artistic production."
38. ↑ Peoples, Glenn. Analysis: Are Musicians Losing the Incentive to Create? Billboard. July 26, 2010.
39. ↑ Friedlander, Joshua P. & Lamy, Jonathan. Illegal Downloading = Fewer Musicians ifpi.org, July 19, 2010.
40. ↑ The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada , Birgitte Andersen and Marion Frenz
41. ↑ Peoples, Glenn. A New Look at an Old Survey Finds P2P Hurts Music Purchases , Billboard. February 2, 2012.
42. ↑ Barker, George R. Evidence of the Effect of Free Music Downloads on the Purchase of Music CDs Social Science Research Network. January 23, 2012.
43. ↑ "Estimating displacement rates of copyrighted content in the EU". https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2017/09/displacement_study.pdf.
44. ↑ Bhattacharjee, Sudip., Gopal, Ram D., Lertwachara, Kaveepan. Marsden, James R. & Telang, Rahul. The Effect of Digital Sharing Technologies on Music Markets: A Survival Analysis of Albums on Ranking Charts Management Science 2007.
45. ↑ Hammond. Robert G. "Profit Leak? Pre-Release File Sharing and the Music Industry " May 2012. File sharing benefits mainstream albums such as pop music but not albums in niche genres such as indie music. ... Further, the finding that file sharing redistributes sales toward established/popular artists is inconsistent with claims made by proponents of file sharing that file-sharing democratizes music consumption."
46. ↑ Peoples, Glenn. Business Matters: Pre-release File Sharing Helps Album Sales, Says a Study. So Why Not Replicate This Legally? Billboard. May 22, 2012.
47. ↑ Global Internet Phenomena Report - Spring 2011 Sandvine Global Internet Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. May 12, 2011
48. ↑ Secure Federal File Sharing Act : Report (to Accompany H.r. 4098) (Including Cost Estimate of the Congressional Budget Office).. United States.. March 11, 2010. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015085442476;view=1up;seq=1. Retrieved February 15, 2018.
49. ↑ Larrier, Travis (March 4, 2013). "Bilal Is the Future (And the Present ... And the Past)". The Shadow League. https://theshadowleague.com/bilal-is-the-future-and-the-present-and-the-past/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=c2ffa10bef1f424fb252543ee09315d038103bd2-1595252623-0-AQaQvFZEknRWDZtLz_-KpHpRYNhNqscHTfCHp6Tr8hduX5gs6uyAaQfef1hB3snODkYFwgSlXH9pQZS_OgmovWZg1dxWOfdv6KYaotwCiVhAfOA1NooyRIZBbQ7AuwrnezemOt0aOvC5JqXaUG-ixf6x0eEfcLz6_aB4mZaVUtX5eXwwFSBkfNJmBxG6In4wWiDOMJXhVyzdm_YyrRyUJNYEEsTZ9jXVjo4xZCyDtxOzub5oRn9F3uGLl4IYob_-oI06lSh6NUnbSSYC8SejeXAaDrJ45SThoPXWHhy2_qU8bC0XPFFKmGzELGJ4Di6R6VT6lqtMNIwnKTLQL7_EXDk. Retrieved July 20, 2020.

## Further reading

* Levine, Robert. Free Ride: How the Internet Is Destroying the Culture Business and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back, Bodley Head, February 2011.
* Ghosemajumder, Shuman. Advanced Peer-Based Technology Business Models. MIT Sloan School of Management, 2002
* Silverthorne, Sean. Music Downloads: Pirates- or Customers? . Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, 2004.
* Ralf Steinmetz, Klaus Wehrle (Eds). Peer-to-Peer Systems and Applications. ISBN 3-540-29192-X, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 3485, September 2005
* Stephanos Androutsellis-Theotokis and Diomidis Spinellis. A survey of peer-to-peer content distribution technologies. ACM Computing Surveys, 36(4):335–371, December 2004. doi:10.1145/1041680.1041681.
* Stefan Saroiu, P. Krishna Gummadi, and Steven D. Gribble. A Measurement Study of Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Systems. Technical Report # UW-CSE-01-06-02. Department of Computer Science & Engineering. The University of Washington. Seattle, WA, USA.

## External links

* v
* t
* e

Peer-to-peer file sharing

Networks,
protocols|

| List|

* List of P2P protocols

|

Decentralized|

* Ares
* BitTorrent
* FastTrack
* OpenFT
* Gnutella
* Gnutella2
* Overnet
* WinMX

Server-based|

* Direct Connect
* eDonkey2000
* Kad
* OpenNap

Anonymous|

* Freenet
* GNUnet
* MUTE
* Oneswarm
* Perfect Dark
* RetroShare
* Share
* StealthNet
* WASTE
* Winny

Single client|

* DAT
* Filetopia
* Fopnu
* Soribada
* Soulseek

Comparisons
of clients|

* Advanced Direct Connect
* BitTorrent
* Direct Connect
* eDonkey
* Gnutella
* Gnutella2

Hyperlinks|

* eD2k
* Magnet
* Metalink

Uses|

* Backup
* Broadcatching
* Segmented file transfer
* Disk sharing
* game & video sharing
* Image sharing
* Music sharing
* Peercasting
* Sharing software
* Web hosting (Freesite, IPFS, WebTorrent, ZeroNet)
* Legal aspects

Concepts|

| Privacy|

* Anonymous P2P
* Darknet
* Darkweb
* Friend-to-friend
* I2P
* Open Music Model
* Private P2P
* Seedbox
* Tor
* Virtual private network

|

Internal
technologies|

* Distributed data store
* DHT
* Merkle tree
* Mix networks
* NAT traversal
* PEX
* Protocol Encryption
* SHA-1
* Super-seeding
* Tracker
* UDP hole punching
* µTP

* v
* t
* e

Computer files

Types|

* Binary file / text file
* File format
* List of file formats
* File signatures
* Magic number
* Metafile
* Sidecar file
* Sparse file
* Swap file
* System file
* Temporary file
* Zero-byte file

Properties|

* Filename
* 8.3 filename
* Long filename
* Filename mangling
* Filename extension
* List of filename extensions
* File attribute
* Extended file attributes
* File size
* Hidden file / Hidden directory

Organisation|

* Directory/folder
* NTFS junction point
* Temporary folder
* Directory structure
* File sequence
* File system
* Filesystem Hierarchy Standard
* Path

Operations|

* Open
* Close
* Read
* Write

Linking|

* Alias
* File descriptor
* Hard link
* Shadow
* Shortcut
* Symbolic link

Management|

* File comparison
* File compression
* File manager
* Comparison of file managers
* File system permissions
* File transfer
* File sharing
* File verification

* v
* t
* e

Software distribution

Licenses|

* Beerware
* Floating licensing
* Free and open-source
* Free
* Open source
* Freely redistributable
* Proprietary
* Public domain
* Source-available

Compensation models|

* Adware
* Commercial software
* Retail software
* Crippleware
* Crowdfunding
* Freemium
* Freeware
* Pay what you want
* Careware
* Donationware
* Open-core model
* Postcardware
* Shareware
* Nagware

Delivery methods|

* Digital distribution
* File sharing
* On-premises
* Pre-installed
* Product bundling
* Retail software
* Sneakernet
* Software as a service

Deceptive and/or illicit|

* Unwanted software bundling
* Malware
* Spyware
* Trojan horse
* Worm
* Ransomware
* Scareware
* Shovelware
* Vaporware

Software release life cycle|

* Abandonware
* End-of-life
* Long-term support
* Software maintenance
* Software maintainer
* Software publisher

Copy protection|

* Digital rights management
* Software protection dongle
* Hardware restrictions
* License manager
* Product activation
* Product key
* Software copyright
* Software patent
* Torrent poisoning

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|

* v
* t
* e

Internet slang

Abuse|

* Creepy treehouse
* Cyberbullying
* Cyberstalking
* Doxing
* Flaming
* Griefer
* Hacker
* Keylogger
* Malware
* Sealioning
* Phishing
* Script kiddie
* Shitposting
* Stealth banning
* Spamming
* Troll

Chatspeak|

* emoticon
* emoji
* leet
* owned
* Pr0n
* pwn
* teh
* w00t
* fap
* LOL
* nsfw
* padonkaffsky jargon
* sexting

Imageboard|

* 4chan
* anonymous
* -chan
* CP
* goatse.cx
* lolcat
* lulz
* lurk
* newbie
* O RLY?
* OP
* pedobear
* rickrolling
* Rule 34
* tripcode
* weeaboo

Memes|

* advertising and products
* animation and comics
* challenges
* email
* film
* gaming
* images
* music
* politics
* videos
* miscellaneous

Usenet|

* Eternal September
* PKB
* plonk

* Category
* Portal
* Wiktionary

* v
* t
* e

Web syndication

History
Blogging
Podcasting
Vlogging
Web syndication technology

Types|

* Art
* Bloggernacle
* Classical music
* Corporate
* Dream diary
* Edublog
* Electronic journal
* Fake
* Family
* Fashion
* Food
* Health
* Law
* Lifelog
* Litblog
* MP3
* News
* Photoblog
* Police
* Political
* Prayer
* Project
* Reverse
* Travel
* Warblog

Technology|

| General|

* BitTorrent
* Feed URI scheme

|

Features|

* Linkback
* Permalink
* Ping
* Pingback
* Reblogging
* Refback
* Rollback
* Trackback

Mechanism|

* Conversation threading
* Geotagging
* RSS enclosure
* Synchronization

Memetics|

* Atom feed
* Data feed
* Photofeed
* Product feed
* RDF feed
* Web feed

RSS|

* GeoRSS
* MRSS
* RSS TV

Social|

* Inter-process communication
* Livemark
* Mashup
* Referencing
* RSS editor
* RSS tracking
* Streaming media

Standard|

* OML
* OPML
* RSS Advisory Board
* Usenet
* World Wide Web
* XBEL
* XOXO

Form|

* Audio podcast
* Enhanced podcast
* Mobilecast
* Narrowcasting
* Peercasting
* Screencast
* Slidecasting
* Videocast
* Webcomic
* Webtoon
* Web series

* Anonymous blogging
* Collaborative blog
* Columnist
* Instant messaging
* Liveblogging
* Microblog
* Mobile blogging
* Roblog
* Spam blog
* Video blogging
* Motovlogging

Media|

| Alternative media|

* Carnivals
* Fiction
* Journalism
* Citizen
* Database
* Online diary
* Search engines
* Sideblog
* Software
* Web directory

|

Micromedia|

* Aggregation
* News
* Poll
* Review
* Search
* Video
* Atom
* AtomPub
* Broadcatching
* Hashtag
* NewsML
* 1
* G2
* Social communication
* Social software
* Web Slice

Related|

* Blogosphere
* Escribitionist
* Glossary of blogging
* Pay per click
* Posting style
* Slashdot effect
* Spam in blogs
* Uses of podcasting

0.00

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|

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