BearShare was a peer-to-peer-file-sharing-application originally created by Free Peers, Inc. for Microsoft Windows and also a rebranded version of iMesh by MusicLab, LLC, tightly integrated with their music subscription service.

[3] Following the June 27, 2005 United States Supreme Court decision on the MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. case the BearShare Community support forums were abruptly closed during negotiations to settle an impending lawsuit with the RIAA.

[6] On May 4, 2006, Free Peers agreed to transfer all their BearShare-related assets to MusicLab, LLC (an iMesh subsidiary) and use the $30 million raised from that sale to settle with the RIAA.

[10] Like BearShare they also include a media player and embedded online and social networking features but with a Web 2.0 style, somewhat similar to MySpace or Facebook.

Video files more than 50 Mb in size and 15 minutes in length cannot be shared, ensuring television shows and feature-length movies cannot be distributed over the network.

In August 2006, MusicLab released a variant of the original BearShare gnutella servant, called BearFlix, which was altered to limit sharing, searches and downloads to images and videos.