Users could share files (in this case, music) directly with each other as peers, not relying on a middleman in the form of a centralized server.

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It does this using the BitTorrent protocol, in which the large files are split up into small pieces which are then distributed from peer to peer, rather than from one centralized server.

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Why would you want to copy and distribute dozens of plastic DVDs to people, if you had it available to you in a centralized server on the cloud, in a secure environment that was only accessible by the people who needed to have access to it?

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"Maybe my data should be centralized on a server where I can simply access it from any computer with a browser, " says Jerry Michalski, former editor of Esther Dyson's "Release 1.0" newsletter, who recently started a company called Sociate.

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One of the features buried inside the release notes for Server 2012 is Centralized SSL Certificate (CSC) management.

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