Get the most out of legal file sharing

By Jonathan Parkyn, Computeract!ve
31 Mar 2008

File sharing has a bad reputation but it’s actually a very useful technology. We explain its benefits.

The terms ‘file sharing’ and ‘peer-to-peer networking’ have some pretty negative connotations.

In the press, they’re more often than not associated with legal wrangles over copyright infringement, but you might be surprised to learn that there’s actually nothing illegal about the peer-to-peer networks themselves and, in principle, nothing unlawful about using them to share files.

It’s certainly true that many users of peer-to-peer networks continue to exploit this technology in order to illegally distribute large amounts of copyrighted material over the internet, but you’ll also find the exact same technology being used for a great number of perfectly legitimate uses, too.

In this feature we’re going to find out precisely what file sharing is, how it works and how it can be put to good use, and explain what’s legal and what’s not.

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