Battles fought against the illegal swapping of movies, games and songs via the popular file-sharing network BitTorrent by the MPAA, RIAA and that lot seem to have pushed file-swappers into using eDonkey instead. According to a study by the Cambridge-based Internet analysis firm CacheLogic, usage of eDonkey is now roughly equal to the usage of BitTorrent in the US. Because of the legal action towards the "once-ignored BitTorrent", users are moving to eDonkey to keep downloading hassle free.
You can easily understand why users are moving to eDonkey: all too often now once tries to fire up a "tracker" links site, only to see some RIAA or MPAA legal notice, or find nothing at all. Even on sites not yet threatened by legal action, there seems to be sporadic availability, through the Torrent file searching abilities now offered by the BitTorrent site itself have gone some way to helping this.
As well as eDonkey, users have been flocking back to the Gnutella file-sharing network as well.
"Gnutella was once seen as dead so may be off the radar" of the music and movie industries, CacheLogic's chief technology officer Andrew Parker said. "It's proof that legal pressure from industry groups results in the mass migration of file sharers to an alternative network, whether old or new. This cat and mouse game will continue.