Peer to Peer, better known as P2P, is a kind of Internet network that allows a group of people with the same networking program to connect to each other's personal computers for directly accessing and sharing files stored on the hard drives. Peer to peer computing is also used for utilizing the computing power of several thousand computers to do one task, thus drastically reducing the time taken to do that task. Napster was the original P2P software for file sharing which allowed millions of computer users worldwide to share music files. The P2P file sharing programs thus enable people to search for content (music and other files) in millions of computers and download that content from one of the computers on to their own.
P2P file sharing is quite different from the file trading networks in which one is either provided incentives for uploading files or forced to share the files being downloaded from the network. However, one must remember that many of the files that are shared on P2P networks are copies of copyrighted music and movies. Sharing these copies with strangers without authorization from the copyright holder is considered illegal in most jurisdictions.
These days, decentralized networks such as Gnutella and BitTorrent are defining file sharing in the open source domain. Napster has been re-packaged as a commercial online music sharing network and competes with others providing similar services such as iTunes and Rhapsody.
However, apart from copyright issues, file sharing faces several other issues such as inclusion of malware such as adware or spyware in the file sharing software. Many times, this malware is difficult to remove from the system even after the software has been uninstalled.
Thus, file sharing is a good way to share files with millions of computer users worldwide, but one must take care in choosing and installing the file sharing software.
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