The 50 most significant moments of Internet history

By Nate Lanxon on 25 September 2008, 4:02pm

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One of the Web's greatest benefits (particularly to a site's audio editor!) has been the painless distribution of media. It's easier now than ever before to disseminate your music, movies and pictures, and our choices for this section highlight the road online consumer media has taken.

MP3 is probably the most common format for music on the Internet, and has been hugely popular for over a decade. It fuelled the digital music revolution, it's the codec behind YouTube videos, it saturates P2P networks and it's now the must-use format for DRM-free digital music downloads. This ancient patent marked its public arrival.

Radio HK, founded by Norman Hajjar, was the first full-time, Internet-only radio station that began by broadcasting music from unsigned and independent bands. It's estimated the station reached 100,000 people in 46 countries and held a trial license from ASCAP, making it a pioneer for instigating the legitimate broadcasting of Internet music.

Just a month after being created and two months before getting its first funding, 18-year-old Sean Fanning's Napster application enabled the first of billions of MP3s to be passed over its service. It was instrumental in the Internet permanently changing the music industry.

Once the first BitTorrent client -- written by the protocol's inventor, Bram Cohen -- was released (initially in July 2001, but in a usable public state in October 2002), it was only a matter of time before the application, its variants and associated Web sites changed the face of global media distribution. BitTorrent is generally free to use and ridiculously efficient.

YouTube ushered in the era of Flash-based video and global Web-based video sharing. Founded by three ex-PayPal employees and acquired for $1.6bn by Google in 2006, YouTube has been at the front of the Web-based video revolution. Despite criticism of its low-quality videos, it hosted the first official online American Democratic presidential debate.