image from:-http://computer.howstuffworks.com/napster.htm
P2P sites offer the user the opportunity to download content from other users or downloaders. You conduct your search of file content and then proceed to download. Unfortunately, a lot of content cannot be trusted or contains viruses or is not what it is described to be.
I like the fact that Peer to Peer (P2P) networking sites offer myself the opportunity to download content from the internet for free. I have been using P2P sites for many years and Limewire and Bit-torrent are a few of my favorite sites. There are drawbacks however with using P2P, the obvious is copyright. When downloading from P2P sites that offer free material “illegal” content, without the designer/producer/creators approval, you are in breach of copyright laws.
Whilst most P2P sites do ask that you take into note that illegal content should not be downloaded and copied or reproduced, does anyone ever listen to this disclaimer? Do I get a guilt attack when downloading the latest hits to play in my Ipod or car? Even if I did feel guilty, the content is still available and free and that is what entrances people to download.
Napster was found guilty of adding illegal content for download to their site and was therefore fined and closed. Napster has now re-opened and now has music content to download, this time for a small fee. Now everyone seems happy to be getting their share of the money, so Napster can stay.
This is a simple diagram of how P2P works. The word Napster can be replaced with Bit-torrent or Kazaa or Limewire. It seems that music corporations, producers and artists are against free p2p sites due to loss of income, royalties etc. Maybe if they focused more on getting their content onto the net for consumers to enjoy rather than sales, they would see the profit rise in concert numbers and or sales
