Downhill Battle is a non-profit organization based in Worcester, Massachusetts. It was founded by Nicholas Reville, Holmes Wilson, and Tiffiniy Cheng in August 2003. [1] [2]
Downhill Battle is known for its argument that the four major recording labels have an oligopoly that is bad for both musicians and music culture. It also believes that filesharing can strengthen the role of independent record labels in the music industry, and they help produce software that helps independent artists and journalists reach a wider audience. The group supports what they call "participatory culture" where everyone is a part of creating and sharing art and music. [3] [4]
Downhill Battle are also known for their projects such as Grey Tuesday, Eyes on the Screen, Banned Music, Peer-to-Peer Legal Defense Fund, and more. Downhill Battle made Spin Magazine's Top 100 moments that rocked the world at #81 for the moment when Downhill Battle launched Grey Tuesday and the Grey Album went viral. [2] [5] [6]
The Downhill Battle team also founded the Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF) and Fight for the Future, a freedom of speech and privacy advocacy organization. PCF also has a set of Participatory Politics projects, including a politics news site and a messageboard service that has been a gathering space for self-organizing. [7] [8]
Downhillbattle.org was down for an extended period of time but as of October 16, 2011, Downhillbattle.org had been reactivated.
LimeWire was a free peer-to-peer file sharing client for Windows, macOS, Linux and Solaris. Created by Mark Gorton in 2000, it was most prominently a tool used for the download and distribution of pirated materials, particularly pirated music. In 2007, LimeWire was estimated to be installed on over one-third of all computers globally.
BitTorrent, also referred to as simply torrent, is a communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a decentralized manner. The protocol is developed and maintained by Rainberry, Inc., and was first released in 2001.
The Invisible Internet Project (I2P) is an anonymous network layer that allows for censorship-resistant, peer-to-peer communication. Anonymous connections are achieved by encrypting the user's traffic, and sending it through a volunteer-run network of roughly 55,000 computers distributed around the world. Given the high number of possible paths the traffic can transit, a third party watching a full connection is unlikely. The software that implements this layer is called an "I2P router", and a computer running I2P is called an "I2P node". I2P is free and open sourced, and is published under multiple licenses.
MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., 545 U.S. 913 (2005), is a United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled unanimously that the defendants, peer-to-peer file sharing companies Grokster and Streamcast, could be held liable for inducing copyright infringement by users of their file sharing software. The plaintiffs were a consortium of 28 entertainment companies, led by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios.
Social peer-to-peer processes are interactions among humans with a peer-to-peer dynamic. Peer-to-peer (P2P) is a term that originated from the popular concept of the P2P distributed computer application architecture which partitions tasks or workloads between peers. This application structure was popularized by file sharing systems like Napster, the first of its kind in the late 1990s.
This is a timeline of events in the history of networked file sharing.
The Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose mission is to "enable and support independent, non-corporate creativity and political engagement."
FrostWire is a free and open-source BitTorrent client first released in September 2004, as a fork of LimeWire. It was initially very similar to LimeWire in appearance and functionality, but over time developers added more features, including support for the BitTorrent protocol. In version 5, support for the Gnutella network was dropped entirely, and FrostWire became a BitTorrent-only client.
Peer-to-peer file sharing is the distribution and sharing of digital media using peer-to-peer (P2P) networking technology. P2P file sharing allows users to access media files such as books, music, movies, and games using a P2P software program that searches for other connected computers on a P2P network to locate the desired content. The nodes (peers) of such networks are end-user computers and distribution servers.
Miro was an audio, video player and Internet television application developed by the Participatory Culture Foundation. It runs on Microsoft Windows, macOS, FreeBSD and Linux and supports most known video file formats. It offers both audio and video, some in HD quality.
Rainberry, Inc., formerly known as BitTorrent, Inc., is an American company responsible for μTorrent and BitTorrent Mainline. The company was founded on September 22, 2004 by Bram Cohen and Ashwin Navin. It was successful during the Great Recession under the leadership of CEO Eric Klinker. In 2018, the company was acquired by cryptocurrency startup TRON, and Bram Cohen left the company. In March 2022, the SEC charged Rainberry with fraud for selling cryptocurrencies Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT) as unregistered securities.
Steal This Film is a film series documenting the movement against intellectual property directed by Jamie King, produced by The League of Noble Peers and released via the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol.
Vuze is a BitTorrent client used to transfer files via the BitTorrent protocol. Vuze is written in Java, and uses the Azureus Engine. In addition to downloading data linked to .torrent files, Azureus allows users to view, publish and share original DVD and HD quality video content. Content is presented through channels and categories containing TV shows, music videos, movies, video games, series and others.
The following is a general comparison of BitTorrent clients, which are computer programs designed for peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol.
Participatory culture, an opposing concept to consumer culture, is a culture in which private individuals do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers (prosumers). The term is most often applied to the production or creation of some type of published media.
File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia, 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 in the United Kingdom relates to the distribution of digital media in that country. In 2010, there were over 18.3 million households connected to the Internet in the United Kingdom, with 63% of these having a broadband connection. There are also many public Internet access points such as public libraries and Internet cafes.
Torrent poisoning is intentionally sharing corrupt data or data with misleading file names using the BitTorrent protocol. This practice of uploading fake torrents is sometimes carried out by anti-infringement organisations as an attempt to prevent the peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing of copyrighted content, and to gather the IP addresses of downloaders.
RARBG was a website that provided torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. From 2014 to 2023, RARBG repeatedly appeared in TorrentFreak's yearly list of most visited torrent websites. It was ranked 4th as of January 2023. The website did not allow users to upload their own torrents.
YggTorrent is a French semi-private torrent directory and BitTorrent tracker created in 2017.