File Sharing

File sharing is providing access to information that is digitally stored. Sharing the files can be achieved in many ways including manual sharing using removable media, centralized servers, hyperlinked documents and peer-to-peer networking. For this blog I would like to focus on peer to peer, or P2P sharing.

This type of sharing allows users to access media such as books, music, movies and more using software that searches for other computers allowing the shared access. An early P2P network that you may remember was Napster. Many more softwares popped up following  Napster’s popularity, including Bearshare and Winamp, to the current favorite BitTorrent.

An increase in bandwidth and the capabilities of residential computers are just a couple reasons why P2P networks had such a widespread adoption. The fact that this type of sharing is not illegal, also boosted it’s popularity. For the most part, this type of sharing is completely legitimate. Legal issues only arise when the file sharing contains copyrighted material. Referring to the music and film industry, copyright infringement has been a controversial and undetermined argument. Most studies concluding that file sharing has a negative effect on record sales are unofficial.