According to figures from analyst firm Forrester, 14% of European internet users engage in illegal file-sharing.
Developers of the BitTorrent file-sharing process have opened an experimental data-synchronising tool up to the public.
But programs like Dropbox for file-sharing are also growing as social media networks.
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Dissatisfied customers and a culture of copying created an ideal environment for file-sharing to grow.
BitTorrent.com's experiments hint at an emerging media distribution and discovery future for the file-sharing protocol.
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The industry has failed to shut down file-sharing companies whose peer-to-peer software has legitimate applications.
On Wednesday, a Canadian judge ruled, in effect, that file-sharing was legal under Canadian copyright law.
"Most file-sharing programs aren't the most upstanding citizens of the computing world, " Pegorraro says.
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He believes that file-sharing is a "fad" and predicts it will fade in popularity.
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Such considerations are unlikely to end the file-sharing fad, but they seem sure to change it.
Their critics say this shows that cyberlockers realise illegal file-sharing will no longer be tolerated.
So a number of outlets have experimented with creating their own whistleblower-friendly file-sharing systems.
File-sharing networks haven't just given computer users a new way to find music and movies.
Over the last couple of years, we kinda forgot about the drama that surrounded peer-to-peer file-sharing.
If file-sharing prevents people from selling books, CDs, DVDs, and boxed software, then copyright is dead.
The founder of file-sharing website Megaupload has been denied bail by a New Zealand court.
Much pornographic content may simply have shifted from the web to peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, for example.
At the same time, it earns money trying to disrupt the illegal file-sharing channels.
Its success is built on austerity: no ads and a tight focus on texting, photo-sharing and file-sharing.
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He cites online file-sharing firms like Dropbox and Box.net, which are popular with companies, as potential competitors.
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Since then, Cohen's method of peer-to-peer file-sharing has become a favorite tool for music and video pirates.
"This will be a very different experience from traditional file-sharing networks, " said Gilles BianRosa, CEO of Azureus.
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She hired a dozen software engineers to build a P2P network mimicking China's popular illegal file-sharing services.
At the moment they view such upstarts as a handy way of weaning customers from illegal file-sharing websites.
UKNova has stopped offering BitTorrent links after becoming the latest file-sharing site to be targeted by copyright defenders.
Even Box, which is the business-focused file-sharing and collaboration rival to Dropbox is a perfect example of this.
An example of a prohibitionist model is the recording industry shutting down file-sharing to reign in intellectual property.
Just 20 countries or areas from a total of 250 accounted for a staggering three-quarters of total file-sharing activity.
The file-sharing company has passed 25 million users and now has more than 200 million files saved each day.
Trade organizations find file-sharing data so hard to track that it isn't even included in their official piracy calculations.
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