P2P 1 year after Grokster

By “Grokster,” I mean the Supreme Court’s landmark decision last year involving Grokster and other defendants in the file-sharing case. The San Jose Mercury News takes a look at what’s happened with P2P over the past year. One thing we’ve learned over the past year of unabated P2P activity worldwide, is that shutting stuff down sends Internet users underground, making their activities tougher to police. A very apt model for the current social-networking discussion in Washington, as lawmakers – with the Delete Online Predators Act working its way around Capitol Hill – look to do some censoring. “File sharing, most of which is illegal, continues to grow. Nearly 10 million users worldwide simultaneously clicked into peer-to-peer technology last month - 12% more than May 2005,” the Mercury News reports citing research from L.A.-based BigChampagne, which monitors file-sharing traffic.