The truth about file sharing

File sharing has been in the news a lot recently, but there is also a lot of mis-information. So, how does file sharing work? Can you use it without expecting a knock on the door from the police? And why would you want to try it anyway?

In this article we will expose all the myths, explaining the best-kept secrets about this handy new technology.

Secret 1: It’s legal
Probably the least known fact about file sharing is that it’s legal. There are people who use file sharing for illegal purposes but that does not make the technology against the law.

There are plenty of people who use file-sharing technology in legal ways and for legitimate reasons. To better understand the difference between illegal and legal file sharing, let’s have a look at how file sharing works.

File sharing usually refers to something called peer-to-peer (P2P). This is an alternative to traditional networking, where files being shared are stored on a big central computer known as a server.

An example of this might be a web page, with images and text. The web page’s contents are stored on a server somewhere and when you type the address into your web browser these files are transferred to your computer to be displayed.

With P2P, the files are not stored on a single server. Instead they remain on other users’ PCs, and when your computer requests a file it could be sent from any other computer that has a copy. If many have a copy they can all contribute different parts of the file, which is then reassembled at its destination.

Benefits of this approach include the fact that server computers cost money to buy and run and this approach removes that cost. And downloading a file in pieces from a number of computers rather than just one can make the process far faster.

The technology required to do this does not break any laws. However, many press reports use the term peer-to-peer when referring to using this technology to share files that are protected by copyright, such as music, video games and movies. Downloading these files without paying the copyright owner is illegal, no matter how you choose to do it.