Half Empty or Half Full? P2P as Innovative, Illegal, and Dangerous

For many years, P2P stayed in controlled environments like LANs and, at most, WANs. Usenet was the only implementation that was even remotely peer-to-peer in the wild. Then came the likes of Napster and similar programs that pushed the envelope of innovation and sucked the bandwidth out of our networks. P2P has continued to mature as an application strategy but has also met with considerable resistance along the way.

In terms of recent innovation, Delft and Harvard have teamed up to bring P2P to ecommerce (see also the CBC article). Also in the EU, Tribler is gaining steam as it offers sharers more bandwidth while punishing leechers. Unlike BitTorrent, the benefit would be asymmetrical.

Sadly, even as innovation grows, litigation grows with it. Even as the Napster trial that begun 7 years ago was finally drawing to a close, the RIAA has been sending out more notices alleging copyright infringement to undergraduates at universities and colleges (most recently: Swarthmore College).

Finally, as the implementations of P2P becomes more sophisticated, learning from others, clients and customers are more inclined to trust it. This dynamic was highlighted most recently when Skype's servers went down for three days.

Despite the apparent posture of the RIAA, there are clearly implementations of P2P that are innovative and legal. Slowly, the technology is evolving such that one can control the bandwidth and content being shared. Until those aspects of control have matured, many will emphasise the grey cloud while the rest of us focus on the silver lining.