CuteMX was an early P2P file sharing program that emerged prior to

Napster Napster was an American proprietary peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing application primarily associated with digital audio file distribution. Founded by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, the platform originally launched on June 1, 1999. Audio shared ...

's demise. Like services such as Napster and Scour, CuteMX used a centrally-located

server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides requested information for other programs or devices, called clients. Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending custome ...

for connecting users of the service and their shared files. CuteMX was developed by GlobalSCAPE in 2000 but unlike Napster, Globalscape decided to pull the service due to intense litigation around Napster, preferring to honor the

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...

complaints by the music industry artists and their associates, and reconsider introducing CuteMX after the issues were decided and clarified in the courts, even though CuteMX had actually gained a fairly sizable dedicated user base. GlobalSCAPE announced in July 2000 that they had shut down CuteMX temporarily due to Napster's ongoing court battles. The last version of the CuteMX client (2.5) was released in August 2000 with content filtering technology meant to prevent trading of illegal files and to appease the movie and music recording industries. In spite of the positive results for Napster from their own litigation, no further versions of the CuteMX program were released. The "MX" in the CuteMX name stood for "Media eXchange" and "Music eXchange"

Technology

The CuteMX client had an integrated version of

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP, officially referred to as Windows Media Player Legacy to retronym, distinguish it from Windows Media Player (2022), the new Windows Media Player introduced with Windows 11) is the first media player (application soft ...

. Additional client features included DCC (direct client-to-client) transfer for trusted users and private chat and

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate ( real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involv ...

functionality.CuteMx – The Sonic Spot

References

External links

GlobalSCAPE
new products press release - November 15, 1999 {{File sharing File sharing software Windows file sharing software 2000 software