WinMX

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WinMX is a peer-to-peer - file sharing application for Microsoft Windows , which the company Frontcode Technologies was developed.

history

WinMX was created during Napster's heyday . The first version was just a client for OpenNap servers; it was released on October 8, 2000. When the Recording Industry Association of America ( RIAA for short ) increasingly took action against the OpenNap networks in March and April 2001 and the few remaining servers were overloaded, the WinMX programmers developed their own, decentralized network called WinMX Peer Networking Protocol ( WPNP for short ) , which started with the release of version 2.5 of WinMX on May 2, 2001. To this day, WinMX supports both protocols.

In 2002, the number of concurrent WinMX users was estimated at 1.5 million, making it the second largest file sharing network after Kazaa .

After the release of version 3.31 on October 19, 2002, the developers took a long break until they released version 3.52 in mid-June 2004 and version 3.53 at the beginning of July 2004, which introduced some updates to their own WPNP network. Frontcode Technologies maintained a few PeerCache servers to support the WPNP network by caching the IP addresses of many WinMX users.

WinMX was also very popular in Japan because of its 2-byte character support. The popularity declined sharply after a few arrests of WinMX users and ended in the development of a serverless, partially encrypted application called Winny .

In September 2005, according to media reports, WinMX received a cease-and-desist letter - according to a warning - from the RIAA, which referred to the judgment of the US Supreme Court against the operator of the P2P program Grokster from June 2005. On September 21, 2005, Frontcode took the websites frontcode.comand offline winmx.comand shut down the central server farm. At the beginning of October 2005 the domain was registered winmx.comon the island nation of Vanuatu .

However, some WinMX fans developed patches that enable the continued operation of WinMX's own WPNP network and OpenNap on alternative servers. Although the restart was hampered by rivalries within the community between the main players Winmxworld and Vladd44 and the music industry tried to sabotage the system through fake files and search results ( fake flooding ), there is still an active user community, whose members particularly appreciate the communication options that WinMX offers compared to newer, more modern file sharing systems. In November 2006 there were around 2000 chat rooms.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ WinMX - The Beginning, The Middle, The End (English) - Article at slyck.com by Thomas Mennecke , October 4, 2005
  2. ↑ Felix Oberholzer, Koleman stocking: The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales. An Empirical Analysis (PDF; 369 kB) (2004)

Web links