P2P downloaders go legal

Lawful use will grow 10 times faster than illicit use

23 October 2008 11:10 GMT / By Katie Scott

It seems on both sides of the Atlantic, surfers are getting behind legal downloads.

A new report Stateside suggests that there will be a 400% increase in P2P (peer-to-peer) internet traffic over the next 5 years.

But, most interesting, MultiMedia Intelligence, the firm behind the research, claims that lawful P2P uses will see the biggest growth in this sector.

Frank Dickson of MultiMedia Intelligence claims that P2P is a cheap way of companies getting content to clients, especially those delivering video content.

Says Dickson, done right, P2P distribution can save valuable cash for these providers.

And once legal applications begin to boom, he says that they will soon dwarf the illegal uses.

But how are ISPs going to react to this extra pressure on the networks?

And could this mean more traffic throttling or bandwidth caps?

Full tags

Software, Online, Music downloads, Websites