Introduction

The M.C. Escher Company – the Netherlands.

Used with permission.

Canadian Copyright Act and Bill C-60. Also discussed is why it is that P2P networks are still running following the shut-down of Napster, and the Pros and Cons of Music Sharing addresses both sides (though I will admit a pro-biased slant to it!) of the issue. And for your listening pleasure, the section Treats has a few tunes you can listen to/download, and they're copyright free!

Sharing music with peer-to-peer (P2P) networks is probably not new to you. Programs such as Napster, LimeWire, and KaZaA all allow the transfer of files from one user to another using a variety of protocols.

At any given time, thousands of users may be connected to a P2P network, with tens of thousands of files available for downloading. These include music files, both copyrighted and open source, videos, pictures, movies, documents, and a variety of other data - basically anything that can be digitized potentially can be found on these networks.

The first to develop a P2P protocol for sharing music files was Napster. The section How Napster Worked outlines the development of Napster (Background), Napster's Architecture, and talks about the Downfall of Napster.

The section How Gnutella Works addresses this "true" P2P network protocol. In it is a brief history of the development of the protocol (Background), about the Gnutella Architecture, and about the clients that run using the Gnutella protocol (Gnutella Clients).

And no discussion about music sharing on P2P networks would be complete without including something on Copyright Issues. This section briefly discusses the US Copyright Act and the