First note. If what you are looking for is the story of the pizpireto of Soriano, who was immortalized by the cameras of the ‘Callejeros’ chanting “Pim-pam, drink Lacasitos” under complete alcohol control after a night full of partying, then it is the story of the other Ares. In case check it out Take a look at this article on Motorpasion. Now it’s time for the equally popular Ares, but something older.

All eyes are now on file-sharing software Ares Galaxy, the famous P2P (peer-to-peer) program that allowed a generation to download everything from El Arrebato or Evanescence’s last song to the last episode of ‘Pirates’. From the Caribbean.

If you want to access or share a movie, video clip, photos or programs, Ares has offered a tool relatively simple and open. It was so compelling that it became a PC classic of the first decade of the 2000s, before Spotify burst onto the scene and other streaming content platforms emerged. It wasn’t as convenient, fast and accessible as choosing a movie on Netflix or listening to a song on Spotify, but it offered other advantages.

And these advantages allowed it to gain popularity in the 2000s and survive decades later.

Simple and successful

To find the origins of the Ares Galaxy, we need to go back twenty years to 2002, when other P2Ps like Napster or Kazaa, which were a few years younger, began to spread and succumbed to tremendous pressure in one way or another. the success they eventually achieved. It was easy to install, its interface did not present major difficulties, and the files were found and downloaded more or less quickly. Thanks to these contents, it did not take long for it to be adopted among users.

And of course he triumphed.

The program started with the Gnutella network, but a few months after its premiere it decided to use its own decentralized network. The next big change occurred in 2005. published his code It became free software under the GPL license and perhaps to avoid the legal problems Napster faced a few years ago. Over time, P2P gained customers and funding until it reached a popularity comparable to Emule, also released in 2002.

It wasn’t all champagne and roses.

Ares has become the gateway to a universe of content including songs, TV series episodes, movies and games, but it has also become such a feared virus filter that some cyber owners — another relic of the Internet — have come to ban its installation. There were those who modified the code to create Variants containing adware or malware was incorporated and then put into circulation.

So, in between downloads and another outrage when he found out that your computer was infected, Ares was celebrating his birthday and writing a chapter on the recent history of the Internet and sharing it with other clients. peer to peer eMule is equally or even more popular than Ares Galaxy itself, like LimeWire or Soulseek. Meanwhile, Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon were laying the foundations of Spotify and loop change in Sweden. New times, new uses, new tools, you know.

Just because their years of fame are far away doesn’t mean Ares Galaxy, Soulseek or eMule are dead. Even today you can download the old Ares from SourceForge.

Perhaps not the abundance of content of fifteen years ago, but in 2018 we still told you how you can use it – with a search engine, channels for chatting with other users and its own native player – to download episodes of some series or others. Not a lotTRUE.

Now, as an exercise in nostalgia, it’s invaluable.

in Xataka | Young people no longer know how to use emules: This is how interest in P2P networks has decreased in a few years

Pictures | Wikipedia And weldingforge

*An earlier version of this article was published in October 2022.