eDonkey2000

Two founders who went on to build OkCupid and Stellar

Shut down
19902026

eDonkey2000 introduced swarming to the mainstream: instead of pulling a file from one person, you pulled pieces of it from everyone who had them. It became the network of choice for large files, then stopped in 2005 after a letter from the RIAA and paid $30 million a year later. Its network outlived it, because eMule never needed MetaMachine to keep running.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2000
  2. 6 September 2000 Launch
    eDonkey2000 is released

    Jed McCaleb ships the first version. Client and server for Windows and Linux follow on 16 September.

  3. 2004
  4. 2004 Feature
    Overnet development is folded in

    MetaMachine stops developing its serverless network separately and builds the protocol into eDonkey.

  5. 2005
  6. 27 June 2005 Legal
    MGM v. Grokster is decided

    The Supreme Court makes software makers liable for inducing infringement, and the letters start arriving.

  7. 28 September 2005 Shutdown announced
    Distribution stops

    MetaMachine pulls eDonkey after a cease and desist letter from the RIAA.

  8. 2006
  9. 12 September 2006 Shutdown
    $30 million consent judgment

    MetaMachine and its founders agree to pay and to shut down the infrastructure they control.

The site through time

Browse edonkey2000.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

MetaMachine, Inc. 2000–2006 Founded Jed McCaleb and Sam Yagan

Key figures [edit]

MetricValueAs ofConfidence
Downloads ▲ 200 million 2005 Estimated Widely cited download total across the client's lifetime

Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: A cease and desist letter from the RIAA in September 2005 stopped distribution. A consent judgment on 12 September 2006 required MetaMachine to pay $30 million and shut the network infrastructure it controlled.

Our analysis: eDonkey died because the Supreme Court changed the law under it. MGM v. Grokster, decided in June 2005, made software makers liable for inducing infringement, and the RIAA worked through the survivors one at a time.

History [edit]

Swarming

Jed McCaleb released eDonkey2000 on 6 September 2000, ten days before Windows and Linux versions of both client and server were available. Where Napster handed you one source for one file, eDonkey split a file into chunks and pulled them from every peer that had them, combining their bandwidth. Large files, disc images, videos and software, suddenly moved at a speed that made them practical.

MetaMachine, the company McCaleb ran with Sam Yagan, later added Overnet, a serverless companion network. Between the two, eDonkey became the default in Europe in a way it never quite managed in the United States.

The letter

On 27 June 2005 the Supreme Court decided MGM Studios v. Grokster, holding that a company distributing software with the object of promoting infringement is liable for what its users do. The RIAA sent cease and desist letters to what was left of the field. MetaMachine stopped distributing eDonkey on 28 September 2005.

The formal ending came on 12 September 2006, when MetaMachine, McCaleb and Yagan signed a consent judgment: $30 million, no further distribution of eDonkey2000 or Overnet, and the shutdown of the central infrastructure they controlled.

What was left

The network did not die with the company, because it did not depend on it. eMule, an open-source client with no company to sue, carried the ed2k protocol on for years afterwards and still runs.

The founders did better than the software. Sam Yagan co-founded OkCupid, sold it to Match, and later ran Match Group. Jed McCaleb went on to create Mt. Gox, then Ripple, then Stellar. Few shutdowns have produced a stranger set of second acts.

Similar projects

Megaupload The file locker the FBI took down 2005–2012 Napster Every song in the world, free, right now 1999–2001 Kazaa The post-Napster free-for-all 2001–2012 LimeWire Half your MP3s, half your malware 2000–2010 Oink's Pink Palace Raided by Interpol, and its founder walked free 2004–2007 Morpheus Cut off its own network overnight, and kept going anyway 2001–2008

Sources [edit]

  1. eDonkey Just Died TorrentFreak 13 September 2006 [archived]
  2. RIAA drops the dead eDonkey Pinsent Masons Out-Law 13 September 2006 [archived]

Last verified: 13 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).