Hello Brian, It looks fairly accurate to me. The question of completeness really relates to the framing of the topic. It goes beyond just the recently fashionable topic of "peer-to-peer" filesharing, which makes sense as this was not the method used before Napster and people have been returning to server based methods such as the recently shuttered megaupload.com. As my wife Maria Haigh has noted, peer-to-peer was never popular in areas such as the former Soviet Union where no effective mechanisms existed to prevent commercial servers from offering pirated materials. (http://www.librijournal.org/pdf/2007-3pp165-178.pdf and http://www.tomandmaria.com/maria/publications/MoralEconomyPrinted%20Libri.pd f). On the other hand, the author's implicit focus is really the illicit sharing of files containing copyrighted materials. So this bias causes the author to ignore the broader world of file publication and exchange, from the SHARE software library of the 1950s through listings in books and computer magazines, ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, Netlib, public domain software catalogs and libraries in the 1980s, legal websites such as download.com in the 1990s, etc. Commercial systems such as iTunes also include free content such as podcasts, and this is another important distribution mechanism. Thus is all depends what you mean by "filesharing." Tom -----Original Message----- From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Brian Randell Sent: Monday, April 23, 2012 6:06 AM To: members@sigcis.org Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] The History of File-Sharing Hi: I've just come across what seemed to me to be an interesting account of the history of file-sharing, at: http://torrentfreak.com/the-history-of-filesharing-120422/ Out of curiosity, I'd be interested if someone with more knowledge of file-sharing than I have could comment on the accuracy and completeness of this account. Cheers Brian -- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 222 7923 FAX = +44 191 222 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members