11 Popular Online Piracy Tools From The Turn Of The Century

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Humanity's thirst for getting free things can never be quenched.

As long as there's a working Internet connection to piggyback on, everything from software applications, music albums, popular movies and the latest Game Of Thrones episode is fair game.

Piracy began as file-sharing tools grew in popularity in the late '90s and early 2000s. Here are some of the early software tools and apps that became notorious for spreading unauthorized movies, music and all sorts of files over the Internet.

1) Napster

Created in 1999, Napster quickly became infamous for illegal sharing of MP3 files. Because of its popularity, it actually started hurting music companies and record labels -- Metallica even asked it fans not to use Napster, a move which didn't go down too well with fans, obviously.

2) eDonkey2000

Released in 2000, eDonkey2000 became famous among online filesharers for its better handling of fragmented file pieces as they travelled over the Internet.

3) Kazaa 

The Kazaa Media Desktop became very popular among Indian filesharers, soon after its 2001 release. It sported a rich library of content across different file types and genres. Contrary to its "no spyware" claim, Kazaa was notorious for installing a whole host of malware and adware on unsuspecting online pirates. 

4) Morpheus

The stylistic 'M' logo was an iconic sign of Morpheus, another filesharing tool that gained infamy and a lot of users in the early 2000s. It was big on illegal piracy of music, before diversifying all sorts of content types -- as was the case with any online filesharing tool at the time.

5) Ares

More than anything else, Ares became famous because it had a cool new multimedia player built into it, allowing you to play the music or video files that you were streaming through its network. And it did a pretty good job of it, too.

6) Limewire

What set LimeWire apart from other filesharing tools during the early 2000s is that it was Java based -- it looked and felt different from other filesharing tools you would install on your machine. Secondly, it was a big spyware magnet.

7) Bearshare

Bearshare is another relic from the Internet's past. Along with the ability lookup files and download them, Bearshare also had a multimedia player built in.

8) Audiogalaxy

Audiogalaxy went through multiple reincarnations, but for a brief four year period during the late '90s and early 2000s, it was one of the most popular tools for illegally downloading music files or MP3s.

9) DC++

This online piracy tool gained notoriety through college campuses across India and local Internet providers. DC++ was also famous for having content files not found on any other P2P network.

10) BitTorrent

BitTorrent started off as a peer-to-peer data transfer technology, but later debuted as a standalone tool for downloading data from the Internet. It became a very popular conduit for the spread of illegal piracy, obviously.

11) uTorrent

Arguably one of the most widely used filesharing tools available online right now, with close to 200 million users around the world, uTorrent has made it easier to share files over P2P than ever before. You'd be surprised to know that the app dates back to 2005!