P2P (Peer to Peer)

Ah, the golden age of Napster and Kazaa sure brings back memories. When a multitude of music, videos and files that were available with two clicks of a mouse. Wait a minute, they still are available! BitTorrent and Ares particularly come to mind in this day and age. What do these applications have in common? They are Peer to Peer; the content that is available is supplied by users that make them available via the programs settings. Then, by default; the files that are downloaded by other users become available and shared from that users' computer as long as it's on and has the application running. This cycle continues with other users, and many times file sharing is done amongst a couple of users at the same time; each user contributes distinct parts of the file. As stated by Pearl Weisel (Professor, Baruch College, NYC) there are some common justifications for P2P: "I'm helping out those who can't afford to pay such high prices for digital products (i.e., stealing apples to give to the poor). Those media (or software or …) companies charge too much for their products. I'm just stealing from a thief. I'm trying to spur creation of new business models.The Devil made me do it. [my personal favorite]." Sure, a sarcastic way of saying there are many excuses to participate in peer to peer practices, but let's be honest; if we don't do P2P (which I doubt), we have done it at some point. I'm not for it or against it personally, yet I do believe that Net Neutrality is defended by having these methods available for use, even though it is under constant scrutiny by governments worldwide.