The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Consumption and Consumer Studies

Peer-to-Peer File Sharing

PIERGIORGIO DEGLI ESPOSTI

University of Bologna, Italy

DOI: 10.1002/9781118989463.wbeccs191

Technically, the term “peer to peer” (P2P) refers to the architecture of a network in which each node is not hierarchically connoted as simply a client or a server, but categorized according to its capabilities of hosting or receiving data. The fact that any node can be a peer means that it is both a client and a server at the same time. The only distinction is in the terminal nodes defined as host, which is essentially an exception or a new paradigm in the logic architecture of a network. According to this structure each and every node can begin and carry out an entire communication process, even if each node is different from the others in terms of speed, size, and memory. The main advantages of such a structure are the cost effectiveness and the speed of the upload/download process.

These systems have become quite popular, beginning in 1999 with Napster, a software that allowed the exchange and downloading of music (especially of .mp3) without paying royalties. Napster struggled with music's major labels and copyright laws, which led to the evolution of a P2P-based system for illegally sharing and downloading digital content such as audio/video and software.

After the shutdown of Napster, the technological evolution of P2P downloading went through second-generation platforms such as Kazaa, Gnutella, and Bit Torrent, which skip the central vulnerability of the ...