Shareaza

The client whose own name was stolen

Zombie
19902026

Shareaza was the Windows client that spoke every language at once: Gnutella, Gnutella2, eDonkey and BitTorrent in a single window, with no adware and no paid upgrade. In December 2007 its domain was taken and turned into a fake version of itself, backed by a shell company linked to the record industry. The real project survived on SourceForge, but its last release was in 2017.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2002
  2. 2002 Launch
    Shareaza is released

    A Gnutella client written by Michael Stokes, aimed at features the others lacked.

  3. 2004
  4. 1 June 2004 Version
    Version 2.0 goes open source

    Source released under the GPL. Shareaza joins LimeWire and Gnucleus as an open-source Gnutella client.

  5. 2007
  6. 19 December 2007 Incident
    shareaza.com is taken over

    The domain is sold under a legal settlement and turned into a fake client backed by Discordia Ltd.

  7. 2008
  8. 2008 Revival
    The project moves to SourceForge

    The development team rebuilds its home at a domain nobody can sell out from under it.

  9. 10 January 2008 Legal
    Discordia files for the Shareaza trademark

    Lawyers for the imposter site move to register the project name in the United States.

  10. 2017
  11. 18 September 2017 Shutdown
    The last release

    Version 2.7.10.2. Nothing has shipped since.

The site through time

Browse shareaza.sourceforge.net as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2002 2005 2008 2011 2014 2017 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Michael Stokes 2002–2004 Founded Sole developer until the source was opened
Shareaza volunteer development team 2004–2017 Spin-off GPL project, moved to SourceForge after the domain was taken

Key figures [edit]

MetricValueAs ofConfidence
Downloads ▲ 30 million 2008 Estimated Widely reported download figure around the time of the hijack

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

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: No release since version 2.7.10.2 on 18 September 2017. The code is still on SourceForge and still runs, but nobody has shipped a build in nearly a decade.

Our analysis: Shareaza was not sued out of existence like its contemporaries. It was hollowed out: first by the 2007 theft of its domain and identity, then by the slow drift of file sharing to BitTorrent and, eventually, to streaming.

History [edit]

Four networks, one window

Michael Stokes released the first Shareaza in 2002 as a Gnutella client that did what the others did not. Over the next two years he added eDonkey2000 support, BitTorrent, and a rewritten protocol of his own called Gnutella2. By the time version 2.0 arrived on 1 June 2004, released as open source under the GPL, Shareaza could search four separate networks at once and swarm a download from all of them.

It also refused to behave like its rivals. While Kazaa and BearShare shipped with bundled adware and nagged users toward paid versions, Shareaza advertised itself as "completely free. No ads, no spyware, no guilting you to upgrade to a commercial version", adding that the developers "couldn't stand that kind of crap". After Stokes stepped back in 2004, a group of volunteers kept it going.

The identity theft

On 19 December 2007 visitors to shareaza.com found a site calling itself "The Official Home of Shareaza", offering a download named ShareazaV4. It was not Shareaza. It was a reskinned iMesh client that connected to no open network at all, only to a DRM-locked music shop run by Discordia Ltd, a Cyprus company with ties to the recording industry. It even used the old Shareaza version 1 logo.

The domain's owner had been forced to sell it as part of a settlement with the French collecting society SPPF. Three weeks later, on 10 January 2008, lawyers for Discordia filed to register "Shareaza" as a United States trademark. The volunteers who actually wrote the software found themselves fighting for the right to keep using its name.

They moved the project to SourceForge and kept releasing. The imposter cycled through V4, V6, V7 and V8 while the real client carried on under a name it no longer owned.

Running, unmaintained

Version 2.7.10.2 shipped on 18 September 2017 and nothing has followed it. shareaza.com no longer resolves at all, the scam having outlived its usefulness. The genuine project is still downloadable, still opens, and still finds peers on networks that have mostly emptied out. It is less a shutdown than an abandonment, which is why this entry is filed as a zombie rather than a death.

The domain today

shareaza.com, the address that was taken in 2007, no longer resolves at all. The scam outlived the project and then died itself. The fact box points at SourceForge, which is where the real code has lived since 2008.

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. Shareaza.com Hijacked and Turned Into a Scam Site TorrentFreak 24 December 2007 [archived]
  2. After Hijacking Site, Scammers Move to Seize Shareaza Trademark TorrentFreak 2 March 2008 [archived]
  3. Shareaza releases SourceForge 18 September 2017 [archived]

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