P2P

When record companies forced CD’s on to retailers because of their much higher profit margin than cassettes and vinyl, they had no idea they opened pandoras box (no pun intended). As the internet proliferated into homes across America and soon the world, it changed the way we interacted with information and each other. Soon programs such as Napster and lime wire were along to make file sharing as easy as searching and clicking. Hence P2P, or peer-2-peer. The idea of paying for music and other media became obsolete. The spread of Broadband just made that easier and furthered that stereotype.

There have been push backs from legislatures and record companies Record Companies. The Napsters of the world have gone legit and, those business models have failed. The traditional record business is collapsing and the age of free media is upon us, record companies are picking up the scraps. Those scraps are pretty big ones, ranging far into the billions of dollars a year. iTunes and Amazon responsible for a large part of trying to sway consumers back to paying for media.

But whether we like it or not, P2P is like the age old battle of armor v. weapon. There will always be a one-upping of sorts. Right now, Torrents are the tools most of us use to freely share content online. What makes them unique is they rely on users, seeders snatchers and leachers to proliferate the data. Whatever that data may be. It is a network as powerful as an individuals computer or millions of computers working together. Popular websites such as thepiratebay.org are only responsible for hosting information and of where to get the file and managing its distribution. The reliance on those websites are minimal compared to that of limewire and napster, which often required some sort of a central database.

All those websites are currently being targeted by the RIAA and other legal bodies but P2Pers will just switch services to private trackers that operate elsewhere. Afterall, there are many dark corners of the internet.