The sharing of digital video using P2P technologies has become more commonplace, but an historic us legal decision made against Grokster and Streamcast networks, both makers of P2P software, concluded that there was 'substantial evidence' that the defendants had profited by promoting copyright infringement. This decision would suggest that anyone wishing to write P2P software with the knowledge and intent that it will be used for illegal file sharing, and promoting that fact, will fall foul of this law in the future.
The current situation with P2P may welt rest with legal initiatives. However, programs like BitTorrent, which were written with the express intention of sharing larger files rather than with the intent to distribute illegal or copyrighted material, are achieving more prominence - especially in academia, where multimedia content is beginning to be distributed in this way.
This may well have a knock-on effect on the trend for more symmetric services in the future39, as uploads will be more prominent than they already are. To quote a recent paper on P2P sharing,'it's not a question of if, but when.. .'BitTorrent is a swarmcasting technology and it might be relevant here to point out what that is and what it does-