Audiogalaxy

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Image:AGSatellite609.png Image:Agtshirt.jpg Audiogalaxy was a file sharing system located at http://www.audiogalaxy.com/ that indexed MP3 files. Founded by Michael Merhej and sporting a web-based search engine, always-on searching for requested files, auto-resume and low system impact, it quickly gained ground among file sharers abandoning Napster in 2001. Some observing the previous downfall of Napster via lawsuit were shocked at the design of Audiogalaxy, which was in some ways more centralized than Napster.

In May of 2001, Audiogalaxy implemented "groups" which allowed group members to send songs to everyone in the group. Clever hackers used this backdoor to circumvent the "blocked songs" restriction, where Audiogalaxy could deny transfer of specific copyrighted songs.

For those curious, here is how blocked songs could be downloaded, Not quite "hacking" but a clever workaround:

 "You need 2 accounts, so sign up for a second if you only have one.
 create a group with your 1st a/c and get your 2nd a/c to join it,
 go into your 2nd a/c & click the song with the X you want 2 download,
 it will tell you its copyrighted
 look at the url in the address bar & take note of the numbers at the end,
 paste this into the address bar & add the numbers (and go to that url):
 http://www.audiogalaxy.com/groups/sendSong.php?&g=
 click send to group
 go back into your 1st a/c & run the satellite
 the copyrighted song will start downloading!"

On May 9, 2002, Audiogalaxy required songs to be in the sender's shared folder to be sent. Previously, one could send any song to anyone by editing the CGI parameters. This protection was quickly defeated by creating a "dummy" file in one's shared folder, and sending a song with the same name -- due to Audiogalaxy's checksum hashing, the correct file was always sent despite the dummy.

Even though Audiogalaxy claimed that they were trying to cooperate with the music industry and block copyrighted songs from their network, they continued to offer illegal MP3s and were sued by RIAA, on May 24, 2002. On this day, Audiogalaxy blocked sending of all blocked songs.

On June 17, 2002, Audiogalaxy reached an out-of-court settlement with the RIAA. The settlement reached would allow Audiogalaxy to operate a "filter-in" system, which required that for any music available, the songwriter, music publisher, and/or recording company must first consent to the use and sharing of the work.

On September 8, 2002, Audiogalaxy licensed and re-branded a for-pay streaming service called Rhapsody from Listen.com and discontinued its famous web-based P2P service.

On December 25, 2002, Martin Rieder wrote a preliminary form of a database-backed backwards-compatible Audiogalaxy server, dubbed OpenAG Server.

On March 28, 2006, the Audiogalaxy messageboards crashed once again meaning no new topics could be created, nor could replies be made to old ones. It is already being called by some as the "end of AG" although the supposed "end of AG" has been seen many times before. The AG community is now waiting to see if AG will be repaired, or if this really is the end. Many of the AG messageboard users are now gathering at either http://www.soundchain.com/index.php or http://www.agelesscommunity.com/boards.php while awaiting the fate of the Audiogalaxy messageboards.

On April 9th, 2006 Users are once again able to post on the boards, although many groups have now disappeared and most users have left to post on other boards.

On April 13th, 2006 The owner Michael Merhej posted on the board explaining that for the moment AG will continue but he has no intention of bringing back verification for new users. He also promised to fix the ignore bug.

Audiogalaxy's stated mission was to facilitate sharing of music, though much more appears to have grown from its legacy. It was notable for its strong community due to such features as chat-enabled groups and per-artist internet forums. Although music is no longer shared, some message boards are still moderately active. Some of the more active forums include the Radiohead, Rush, and General Discussion boards.

Files of any type could easily be shared via Audiogalaxy by renaming a file in a certain way. For example, cdrwin37.zip would be shared by renaming it to cdrwin37<space>zip<space>.mp3

In August 2005, an imitation Audiogalaxy site was set up for discussion boards: http://www.agelesscommunity.com

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