grenzfurthner-ga:
Thank you for your question regarding the volume of MP3 files that
were shared through P2P networks in 2003. I will restate the
information I provided originally in a comment as your Answer.
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One of the main advantages of peer-to-peer file sharing, and the
reason why it has proven rather difficult for organizations like the
RIAA to prosecute for copyright violations that take place over a
peer-to-peer file sharing network, is the fact that the actual file
sharing, or data transfer, is peer-to-peer, it does not pass through
an intermediary server. Therefore, there is no real way to measure or
track the amount of data that was actually shared/transferred across
P2P networks in 2003.
As for the amount of MP3 files that were made available for sharing,
that too is almost impossible to find out, as not all P2P networks
have the ability to measure that. While networks such as that used by
KaZaA do maintain real-time information about the number of users and
amount of data that is available for sharing at that immediate moment,
other networks do not. As well, even for KaZaA, that information is
not publicly accessible. Sharman Networks claims over 60 million users
for the KaZaA network. I would say that it is safe to assume that a
significant portion of that number uses multiple P2P networks. Without
centralized management of each of these P2P networks, the number you
are looking for can only be estimated, not measured. For example, as
of this particular moment, the KaZaA network has 3.3 M online users,
sharing 574 M files, for a grand total of 4,436,992 GB or 4,437 TB or
4.4 PB. That number constantly fluctuates; in fact, in the time it
took me to type that, it already has changed!
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To provide a perspective on this, the original grand-daddy of all
file-sharing networks, Napster, did have centralized management of the
network. That was the reason why they could be directly sued, as no
files could be shared and traded without the direct involvement of
Napster's indexing servers. In an early 2001 news article reviewing a
report by The Gartner Group (a respected market research firm), it is
mentioned that in the glory day of Napster, an average of more than
12,000 PCs were connected to the Napster servers at any given time,
sharing a total of greater than 2 million files occupying
approximately 8.25 Tb.
P2P 'a web jam in the making'
http://www.vnunet.com/News/1119848
Compare that to the value I personally measured while writing that
comment, and you will see that there has been a growth of over 26200%
(in files shared) over the past three years, with a 53300% growth in
the total size of those files. Again, bear in mind that this is for
just the KaZaA peer-to-peer network, and does not include the other
networks that are out there. Mind-boggling!
I hope this information is of use to you!
Regards,
aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher |
