'It's like people who go down to the library's annual book sale. Why do they do it? 'As American consumers, we're conditioned to seek products of value at lower prices,' says Wukong. About 74% of them are trading music, but nearly 9% are trading videoclips, and about 2% are swapping full-length movies.Ĭlick here for the most popular file-sharing systems. According to market research firm Big Champagne, there were on average 8.7 million simultaneous users on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks in May of this year. Wukong represents a polar end of the file-sharing spectrum, pulling down dozens of DVDs, hours' worth of music and multiple applications every month. 'I'm grabbing about 200 gigabytes per month, on average.' 'It's kind of a hobby,' says 'Wukong,' a computer professional and habitual file-sharer, who asked to remain anonymous. But today, file-sharing is one of the most cutting-edge areas of software development, as high-speed Internet connections allow users to trade music, movies and applications at a blistering pace. It wasn't that long ago when computer users had to meet up in person and hand each other floppy disks to trade files.

Download bearshare limewire