P2P Filesharing Networks

Certainly you have heard some of the controversy over filesharing networks and the brouhaha that the music industry has been making over these filesharing networks. File sharing is not new, in fact there were applications that were on the market before Napster exploded onto the scene. Many of these networks have sidestepped the issue of "free" downloading by charging membership fees to their users for access to their database. However there are several that are still free to join, free to use, and not riddled with viral hitchhikers such as spyware, Trojans, and worms.

Three of the better free networks are Shareaza, Limewire, and Zultrax. All three programs can be found and downloaded from C-net's Download.com, which is a resource for a plethora of shareware, freeware, and trial ware. Other P2P's that have been receiving positive feedback and reviews from users are, Bearshare, Bit torrent, and I-mesh. The software is fully equipped with everything that you need to find what you want. Full length feature films, adult movies, software programs, audio, music videos etc. can all be freely downloaded, played, and saved. The only restriction is that you cannot use the material for anything other than personal non commercial use.

How a P2P file sharing network works:

First in order to locate songs or other materials on the network you must use the search interface. You may search by title, group, players, topic, starring actors, etc. Then you simply click and download. It's that simple. The thing that most people do not like about filesharing networks is that while you are downloading files from the network the network is scanning your system for music, and media files to add to it's database. Normally however they are not seeking documents, either protected or unprotected documents. The crawler is basically only interested in audio, and video files. This makes the possible loss of your sensitive personal data a much higher improbability since as I mentioned it is not seeking encrypted or text files. Rather than storing all of that data somewhere new, what it does is index the file and when someone requests it, they upload it from the various members own system as long as it is on and logged onto the system. Most of these applications also have an option for how many times any one file may be uploaded from your system. This is why they are known as P2P networks. Because the content is sent from person to person that happens to use each file-sharing network