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File sharing is the practice of sharing a backup of something contained on a computer system as digital data. Some examples include but are not limited to documents, books, music, movies, pictures and software. The copyright of a file is undetermined when shared and a share of copyright material can occur without the intent to infringe; this often happens with file sharing. It should also be noted that lack of intent to infringe is not a defense. The economic impact on media industries is undetermined; despite claims of economic damage, the most recent studies suggest that file sharing is not the cause of the decline sales in popular media formats.Fact: date=May 2009 Many file sharing programs and services have been shut down due to litigation. Though lawsuits against individual users were common in the early 2000s (10,000 users sued out of 12 million total users, primarily on the Kazaa network), these have declined as of 2009. Such lawsuits have led to a growing movement in opposition to copyright restrictions on file sharing.Fact: date=May 2009

History

main: File sharing timeline Files were first exchanged on removable media through Sneakernet the first known form of peer-to-peer file transfer. Computers were able to access remote files using filesystem mounting or applications that connected to bulletin board systems (1978), and FTP servers (1985). Users of Internet Relay Chat (1988) and Hotline (1997) were able to communicate over chat and use their clients to share files among each other.

USENET created in 1979 by Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis. Stands currently as perhaps the oldest most successful file sharing system on the Internet , users would encode files using base64 and distribute files throughout the world with no central servers. USENET still stands today as one of the largest networks to contain copyright material but due to the fact it is a true peer-to-peer file sharing system it cannot be stopped by legal means. . Censoring USENET has been tested and was described as being similar to punching a paper bag. All true peer-to-peer file sharing applications are built on that same model.

The mp3 encoding, standardized in 1991, substantially reduced the size of audio files. From the first half of 1994 through the late 1990s, MP3 files began to spread on the Internet.Fact: date=May 2009 In 1998, MP3.com and Audiogalaxy were established, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was unanimously passed, and the first mp3 player devices were launched. MP3.com offered music by unsigned artists, and grew to serve 4 million audio downloads daily.

In June 1999, Napster was released and claimed to be a peer-to-peer file sharing system. Napster did not strictly fit into the profile of peer-to-peer software. Napster ultimately lost the court battle to prove it was a true peer-to-peer application. As defined by the courts Napster uses a central server thus is not peer-to-peer. Users were able to make specific MP3 files available on their computers for others to download, with indexing and searching performed by Napster servers. In December, seven months after release, the first lawsuits were filed against Napster. In January 2000, My.MP3.com was released, and allowed users to share albums that they owned. Litigation ensued, and in May, UMG v. MP3.com caused My.MP3.com to shut down.