What is "Peer to Peer"?

googThis is a bit of a thought provoker, so feel free to leave comments:

Lately there has been a lot of controversy about "p2p" networks and file sharing. I am against the sharing of copyrighted material, as it is illegal in most areas and takes money out of the pockets of those who do the work in the first place. That being said, there are a number of legal uses for "p2p" technologies. For example the dreaded bittorrent is often used to reduce server load for internet tv shows and linux distributions. The fun thing is that it seems most lawyers have no real computer knowledge. What is the definition of "p2p"? Wikipedia defines it as a networking technology which uses distributed bandwidth from participants. I guess this means that if I put a FTP server on my computer for my friends to download a file and one of them mirrors the file this is a "p2p network". This could also be done with http or just about any other protocol, so why aren't music/movie companies trying to take down the entire internet (or maybe they are)? Wouldn't it be better to change the business model ("if you can't beat 'em join 'em") or go after people for stealing copyrighted material, not the select few geeks who write the software (look back a couple days on Slashdot). Besides, kazaa is very profitable for those of us who are capable of removing spyware ;-). The internet is a great thing, because it is impossible to regulate (you can't regulate large groups of smart people).

My rant for the evening, enjoy and comment.

On a side note, I have found that the backlinks feature of many blogs is a good way to promote your blog/website. After I linked the google blog yesterday I got 76 unique hits yesterday and 93 so far today, almost a 2000% increase! (with the google blog listed as the referrer for most). Newcomers, please share what you think.