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by vezzy-fnord 3975 days ago
It actually wasn't hard to get started with at all. The likes of eDonkey/eMule, LimeWire, Kazaa and Napster all became hugely popular (and some remain popular in certain jurisdictions) precisely because of how trivial they were to use.

Then, you already mentioned BitTorrent. P2P filesharing wasn't a terrible idea at all, and BitTorrent is evidence.
1 comments
nostrademons 3975 days ago
It's all relative to the alternatives. P2P was easy by desktop app standards, but concurrently with its development, the web started taking over. With webapps, you didn't need to download a program, you didn't need to deal with your firewall settings (consumer firewalls were just starting to become popular during this time period as well), you didn't need to configure upload/download rates or servers - you just clicked on a link and got a file.
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vezzy-fnord 3975 days ago
Sure, but an overwhelming part of file sharing still takes place under BitTorrent, with the web just being a glorified link farm for it.
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