File sharing networks

Streaming media refers to multimedia delivered through a network for playback using a media player. Media is transferred in a stream of packets from a server to a client and is rendered in real-time; this contrasts with file downloading, a process in which the end-user obtains an entire media file before consuming the content. Streaming is more commonly used for video-on-demand, streaming television, and music streaming services over the Internet.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network, forming a peer-to-peer network of nodes. In addition, a personal area network (PAN) is also in nature a type of decentralized peer-to-peer network typically between two devices.

Napster was an American peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing application primarily associated with digital audio file distribution. Founded by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, the platform originally launched on June 1, 1999. Audio shared on the service was typically encoded in the MP3 format. As the software became popular, the company encountered legal difficulties over copyright infringement. Napster ceased operations in 2001 after losing multiple lawsuits and filed for bankruptcy in June 2002.

ExtraTorrent (commonly abbreviated ET) was an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Until its shut down it was among the top 5 BitTorrent indexes in the world, where visitors could search, download and contribute magnet links and torrent files, which facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing among users of the BitTorrent protocol.

EZTV is a TV torrent distribution group founded in May 2005 and dissolved in April 2015, after a hostile takeover of their domains and brand by "EZCLOUD LIMITED". It quickly became the most visited torrent site for TV shows.

A content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN) is a geographically distributed network of proxy servers and their data centers. The goal is to provide high availability and performance ("speed") by distributing the service spatially relative to end users. CDNs came into existence in the late 1990s as a means for alleviating the performance bottlenecks of the Internet as the Internet was starting to become a mission-critical medium for people and enterprises. Since then, CDNs have grown to serve a large portion of the Internet content today, including web objects (text, graphics and scripts), downloadable objects (media files, software, documents), applications (e-commerce, portals), live streaming media, on-demand streaming media, and social media sites.

Rita M. Johnson is an American music and technology journalist, music supervisor and former Director of New Media and Strategic Marketing with Interscope Geffen A&M Records, a division of Universal Music Group. As a journalist, in 1997, she wrote an article on digital distribution and the entertainment industry which appeared in Wired magazine in 1997, predating and anticipating digital downloading and peer-to-peer filesharing of music and film by Napster, Bit Torrent, and The Pirate Bay. The articles has been sited in academic papers. She wrote for Wired for its first 6 years of publication contributing music and technology stories and has contributed to L.A. Weekly, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Blickpunkt:film and Dazed & Confused magazine.

Scour Inc. was a multimedia Internet search engine, and provided Scour Exchange, an early peer-to-peer file exchange service.

VeryCD is a Chinese website that shares files via eD2k links. The website was begun in September 2003 by Huang Yimeng (Chinese: 黄一孟). In June 2005, Shanghai Source Networking Technology Co., Ltd (Chinese: 上海维西网络科技有限公司, or VeryCD company) was established. It is a for-profit organization headquartered in Shanghai, China. Today, VeryCD is one of the most popular file-sharing (via ed2k links) websites in China.

Soribada (Korean: 소리바다) was the first Korean peer-to-peer file-sharing service, launched in 2000 by Sean Yang. The name 'Soribada' means "Ocean of Sound" or "Receiving (downloading) Sound". It was closed in 2002 by court order but continued to be distributed with a stipulation that its users were responsible for any of the files downloaded. On November 5, 2003, Soribada was relaunched as and in July 2004, the website was renewed as a P2P search portal with a paid MP3 service in December 2004.