iMesh is a file sharing and online social network, available to download in 9 languages and uses a proprietary, centralized, P2P protocol operating on ports 80, 443 and 1863. iMesh is owned by an American company iMesh, Inc. and maintains a development center in Israel.

iMesh operates the first "RIAA-approved" P2P service, which allows users residing in America and Canada to listen to music of their choice from a vast library for a monthly fee in the form of either an iMesh Premium subscription or an iMesh ToGo subscription. A third option is also available for users residing in either country (regardless of whether they have a subscription) to permanently purchase tracks for $0.99 each.

In addition to the paid library, iMesh allows all the users worldwide access to large amounts of "non-copyrighted" music and video for free. A legal ringtone service is also available, allowing users worldwide to purchase songs from various artists for their cellphones.

RIAA Lawsuit

On September 18, 2003 the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) sued iMesh for encouraging copyright infringement.

Settlement

iMesh settled the lawsuit a little over 10 months later on July 20, 2004, where according to the RIAA, the terms of the settlement were that iMesh would pay them US$4.1 million and could continue operating as normal (unlike Grokster) whilst implementing a paid service (iMesh 6.0). .

Legality

iMesh is now advertised as a 100% legal P2P client, and acknowledged as being so by the RIAA.

The iMesh 6 client (and later versions) have achieved this by detecting attempts to download copyrighted material and blocking the transfer through the use of acoustic fingerprinting, provided by Audible Magic .

An agreement with the MPAA had also been reached. Video files more than 50mb in size and 15 minutes in length cannot be shared on the iMesh network, guaranteeing feature-length releases cannot be transferred across the network.

Original program

• November 24 1999, a pre-beta 1.02 was released.
• December 26 1999, a beta version 1.02 was released which features instant messaging between users, a new skin and anti-virus scanning.
• March 2 2001, version 2.0 was released.
• March 18 2002, version 3.1 was released.
• April 15 2003 iMesh 4.1 was released.
• September 4 2003 iMesh 4.2 was released.
• June 8 2004, iMesh 5.0 was released which was the first multi-networked client allowing users to connect to the eDonkey Network, Gnutella, Gnutella2 and the iMesh network.
• August 25 2004, iMesh 5.0 build 223 was released with support for the eDonkey Network removed due to many bugs.
• June 30th 2005, iMesh 5.2 was released.

Current program

• October 25 2005, iMesh 6.0 was released. The first "RIAA-approved" P2P service.
• April 10 2006, iMesh 6.5 was released, allowing users to send instant messages to each other and simultaneously listen to the same songs with the "Listen Together" feature
• November 6 2006, iMesh 7.0 was released, which added social networking features, instant messaging, an improved user interface and greater stability to the client.
• April 11 2007, iMesh 7.1 was released.
• April 5 2008, iMesh 7.2 was released.