One purpose of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is to protect the technology of file sharing, and companies that use it, by inventing a theoretical "safe harbor" that shelters all sorts of user-powered platforms from the consequences of illegal actions by the users.

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Allegedly, from September 2009 until September 2011, the defendants obtained separate audio and video for motion pictures showing in theaters, and then edited and combined those components into one infringing movie file, which was shared among thousands of IMAGiNE Group members through the BitTorrent file sharing technology.

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The deal shows how far Skype has come since it was launched in 2003 by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, two men who had created a file-sharing technology called Kazaa that became widely associated with music piracy.

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In the end, he came up with the MPEG-3 technology that spawned the MP3 file-sharing music revolution, the ultimate prize for music fans.

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It was sped by such factors as the spread of DIY studio-recording technology, the rise of online radio and file sharing, and a growing international appetite for electronic music.

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