What Is Grokster?
It can be challenging to understand the history of peer-to-peer file sharing. But Grokster will help. If you want to go back in time and learn about the origin of peer-to-peer file sharing, you can start with a company called Grokster. Shawn Fanning founded it in 2001 to share music files over the internet. "Grokster" was derived from grok, which means "to understand. " In 2002, Grokster was sued by Universal Music Group and several other record companies for encouraging copyright infringement and racketeering. They ultimately lost the case, but only after developing a second-generation peer-to-peer software called Morpheus that allowed users to download any file, including copyrighted ones like movies or music files. Grokster was a peer-to-peer file-sharing client software created by Grokster Ltd. Based on FastTrack, a popular file-sharing protocol, Grokster was considered the second generation of peer-to-peer file-sharing software. It was designed in such a way that it allowed users to transmit files without going through a central server. Any files, including copyrighted files, could be transferred. In its early days, Grokster marketed itself as an "online community" where users could communicate and share their favorite movies, music and programs. However, they had to sign up for an account with Grokster and install their software on their computers to connect with other users interested in sharing similar content. In 2001, the company filed for bankruptcy after being sued by Universal Music Group for copyright infringement when it emerged that people were using Grokster's peer-to-peer technology to distribute copyrighted songs instead of just sharing them among friends as intended (and advertising). Like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Grokster stood accused of stealing from the cookie jar of copyright infringement. While Grokster maintained that it was not responsible for restricted file sharing or downloads and that no files passed through the organization's systems, it was liable for inducing copyright infringement.
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