"Most file-sharing programs aren't the most upstanding citizens of the computing world, " Pegorraro says.

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Rather than spend the money and effort cracking down on illegal file-sharing programs, some schools have decided to provide students with a legal, unlimited supply of digital entertainment.

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It uses a central server to link computers together to avoid the complexity of other peer-to-peer programs such as Gnutella, a file-sharing program popular among the high-tech community.

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But programs like Dropbox for file-sharing are also growing as social media networks.

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