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"P2P File Sharing Programs - Menace or Saviour?"

So most of the people using this forum will likely use or have at least once used a P2P file sharing program e.g. BitTorrent, Limewire, Kazaa, BearShare, and formerly Napster.

So are they merely a means to download music which you dont want to spend a tenner buying the whole album only to dicover its absolute rubbish; or to download TV Shows from USA which you want to see but dont want to wait for them to be on Sky such as 24 whcih is usually ahead by about 6 epidoes. You also dont want to wait for them to be uploaded to any of these streaming sites.

Howver are they a system which, in total is effectively stealing billions of dollars/Pounds from the UK and American TV/music and film industries just for the convenience of those of you who just cant be bothered to wait to have it streamed or to buy it from a shop. Is it "Stealing"?

Although there is a nother method of using these systems which has yet to be explored, the downloading of games. Many games you see their promo and think 'that looks pretty good' so you buy it off of play.com and discover its absolute C"$P. You cannotr send it back without a legitimate reason so you sell it on ebay, howver you are unlikely to get as much as you paid for it.
Howver it could have been avoided had you simply downloaded it, what would you have wasted a little time during whoch you would have encountered loss of bandwisth and some hard-drive space whcih you can always regain but deleting it or shredding it from the system.

However there is another negative, viruses, some of these systems cannot be trusted, and, especially if you are new to the P2P file sharing and dont know what to avoid then you are effectively openign your computer up to viruses, without adequete virus protection, and even then.

So what do you think, are P2P file sharing programs an effective (Moral) way of providing you with a service that you don't have to pay for therefore not wasting money and gettin you ahead of your mates on the latest 24.

OR

Are they a system whcih steals billions of dollars/pounds from UK and USA industries whcih is destroying these companies jsut for utter convenicence of those whco are tight with their wallets.

So most of the people using this forum will likely use or have at least once used a P2P file sharing program e.g. BitTorrent, Limewire, Kazaa, BearShare, and formerly Napster.

So are they merely a means to download music which you dont want to spend a tenner buying the whole album only to dicover its absolute rubbish; or to download TV Shows from USA which you want to see but dont want to wait for them to be on Sky such as 24 whcih is usually ahead by about 6 epidoes. You also dont want to wait for them to be uploaded to any of these streaming sites.

Howver are they a system which, in total is effectively stealing billions of dollars/Pounds from the UK and American TV/music and film industries just for the convenience of those of you who just cant be bothered to wait to have it streamed or to buy it from a shop. Is it "Stealing"?

Although there is a nother method of using these systems which has yet to be explored, the downloading of games. Many games you see their promo and think 'that looks pretty good' so you buy it off of play.com and discover its absolute C"$P. You cannotr send it back without a legitimate reason so you sell it on ebay, howver you are unlikely to get as much as you paid for it.
Howver it could have been avoided had you simply downloaded it, what would you have wasted a little time during whoch you would have encountered loss of bandwisth and some hard-drive space whcih you can always regain but deleting it or shredding it from the system.

However there is another negative, viruses, some of these systems cannot be trusted, and, especially if you are new to the P2P file sharing and dont know what to avoid then you are effectively openign your computer up to viruses, without adequete virus protection, and even then.

So what do you think, are P2P file sharing programs an effective (Moral) way of providing you with a service that you don't have to pay for therefore not wasting money and gettin you ahead of your mates on the latest 24.

OR

Are they a system whcih steals billions of dollars/pounds from UK and USA industries whcih is destroying these companies jsut for utter convenicence of those whco are tight with their wallets.

morally wrong. But to the poor individual, it makes them equal to the rich (like the gun). They can get something which is quite affordable (ie free).

Personally, i only try to obtain extremely rare items or books that i can't normally get through normal means. Illegal? Probably, but i don't pirate games or vids. Too much hassle for that to work properly.

Hassle? Not at all :)

Download through the night, burn the ISO or play it straight off the computer with Magic ISO, Daemon Tools or Gizmo!

Not that I'd have much experience in that area of illegal activity...

Used to offer Demos of limited trials of content, P2P programs could/can be quite useful.

In fact, if anyone cares to download the new Azureus Vuze (a memory hog, I know) you'll see that on the "Dashboard" there's a whole host of content from videos in High and Standard definition, to free trials of games just waiting to be downloaded!

It's where I tried WoW for the first time, and am about to try World in Conflict, which looks stunning.

I only download abandonware. The later games could take forever to download and then i've got to get a CD key engine or something and then either burn them onto a cd or use a virtual drive and thats tedious.

p2p is great. Unfortunately my ISP doesn't seem to agree.
I downloaded Fedora 8 over the last few days through Bittorrent at about 10k/s despite it having about 3000 seeders

Highly irritating when your upload rate exceeds your download, makes me want to scream at those "seeds".