Fast forward to 2000: T1 lines were still being used, but ADSL deployment was growing like wildfire. Some providers were legendary for offering synchronous DSL with extremely few limitations, for a fraction of the cost of a T1. That's what really kicked off a new generation of distributed file sharing. Nothing today compares; the dark web is a tiny blip in the ocean that was the 2000's file sharing scene.
I'm skeptical. In terms of actual usage, there are many, many more people online today. Many people are sharing torrents over their broadband connections: entire movies, all seasons of show. We won't even get into the piracy of books! I think the piracy scene today is much bigger.
There is more bandwidth used today, but there was so much more shared material before. The most heinous illegal shit you could imagine would just float over the network through your node. Your dad's QuickBooks files were downloaded by strangers, along with your family photos. Corporate records, lists of social security numbers kept on a hospital computer. Anything you could imagine. It's vastly different today; the content you can get is curated, only select things get put onto services, and takedown notices often get them dropped. Nothing was taken down back in the day, nobody was watching, and there was no filter. I saw things at 17 that no kid today could possibly get access to. The nature of file sharing today just isn't an open tap like it used to be. You have to try hard to publish or retrieve stuff today; back then it was almost accidental.
