Journal of Intellectual Property Rights Vol 9, September 2004, pp 440-461 P2P Networks: Online Piracy of Music, Films and Computer Software Raman Mittal † Indian Law Institute, Bhagwan Dass Road, New Delhi-110 001 Received 1 June 2004 With the aid of P2P technology, the vast and ever growing cyber populace has the competence of unauthorized sharing of digitized copyrighted works such as music, films and computer software without bothering to pay for them. This unauthorized sharing of copyrighted works, which is termed as online piracy, has led to massive distribution and exchange of valuable stuff, which was hitherto unknown on such a scale and magnitude. When such piracy takes place at the instance of ordinary people, copyright law is once again challenged by the latest in the series of technological innovations, i.e., digital and communications technology. In an environment where the producer-middleman-consumer chain has reached a fragile point, it becomes imperative to find a legal solution to promote creative activity in an organized manner, which secures the interests of both producers and consumers. Towards this end, this paper focuses on the sharing of works through various P2P networks such as Napster, Gnutella and Kazaa and tries to explore their social, economic and legal implications. Keywords: P2P networking, MP3 movement, Napster, Internet, Gnutella, Kazaa, online piracy, copyright industries, audiovisual industry, fair use, copyright law Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network is defined as two or more computers connected by software, which enables the connected computers to transmit files or data to other connected computers. It describes applications in which users can use the Internet to exchange files with each other directly or through a mediating server. Thus, it is a type of transient Internet network that allows a group of computer users with the same networking program to connect with each other and directly access files from one another's hard drives. This connection means that it is a direct link, the file is being directly transferred from one computer to the other and is not going through any mediating server. Napster and Gnutella are examples of this kind of P2P software. P2P is a communications model in which each party has the same capabilities and either party can initiate a communication session. Other models with which it might be contrasted include the client/server model and the master/slave model. In some cases, P2P communications is implemented by giving each communication node both server and client capabilities 1 . This model essentially comes in three distinct modes: __________ † Email: mittalraman@yahoo.com