Grouper – share your stuff with friends, legally

Mill Valley, Calif. – (COLLEGIATE PRESSWIRE) – Oct 26, 2004 – After months of stealth development, Grouper (www.grouper.com) has launched a groundbreaking personal media sharing application to meet the unmet needs of millions of students and Internet users. Grouper makes it easy and fun for friends and family to connect to each other over a private network and share personal media like photos and video clips and stream music. Grouper’s peer-to-peer software is a free, downloadable application that will never contain any spyware or adware.
Grouper was created after its founders grew frustrated at how difficult it was to share personal media on their PCs with their friends and family. University network administrators would block access to popular file sharing networks. Emails would get blocked because media files were too big. Burning discs or memory sticks for friends took hours and cost too much. Uploading files to web sites was painfully slow, and the web sites would restrict how these files could be used.
“We all have 100’s of files on our PCs that we want to share with our friends and family. Grouper was designed to enrich online and real-world relationships by making it dead easy to share personal media, relationships by making it dead easy to share personal media, connect about what is being shared and discover what your friends like,” explained Grouper co-founder and CEO Josh Felser. “Broadband access, file sharing, digital cameras and large, inexpensive hard drives have finally reached the masses. With the convergence of these technologies, we felt the time was right for a truly consumer-friendly, personal media sharing application. ”
Users of Grouper’s software can establish groups of friends, family or class-mates to share any personal media files that group members have on their personal computers: from their favorite music tracks (streamed only) and family photos, to school projects, articles, and any other digital content. Based on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing technology, Grouper is a simple software download that makes it easy to share information with designated group members.
Grouper lawfully leverages its innovative technology to replicate the physical world in which good friends lend one another music stored on tangible media or listen to music in a private setting. Grouper software uses an internal media player to stream MP3 and WMA audio files from one group member to another. This allows group members to listen to each other’s musical discoveries without copying files. Grouper believes this P2P version of a “private performance” is allowed under US copyright law, and therefore expects to avoid the lawsuits associated with public network P2P file copying.
With Grouper’s Beta software you can:
•  Share and download personal media files in small groups. Group size is limited to 30 members and each person designates exactly which files on their computers they wish to share with other members of each group.
•  Stream music with your friends. Members can borrow music from their friends to create playlists and then stream songs directly from their friends’ PCs.
•  Instant messaging and chat. Group members can send each other files through IM and chat and discuss what they are sharing and thinking as files are being shared.
Ideal for Universities
•  Study Groups – Grouper can be used as a practical tool where class mates can form study “groups” and share class notes, collaborative project files, and other relevant materials.
•  Professors and TA’s can start groups for each of their classes to better distribute course materials, post audio/video recordings of lectures, and have on-line group study chats.
•  Lower Cost Networks (coming soon) – A solution for university network administrators allowing students the ability to legally share personal files amongst themselves. Running Grouper through university networks can save Internet bandwidth costs because file transfers are done between machines on the local network (unlike other P2P networks.)