Improving the reputation of peer-to-peer networks

bIPlog's Mary Hodder has some good observations of the potential uses of P2P networks. She says that

[b]ecause most P2P apps are for piracy purposes, companies and others have not explored and used P2P for more legitimate purposes, but increasingly sophisticated P2P apps are being developed that in future might relieve the burden on file caching companies so that individuals will spread freeware, collaborative work projects and other legitimately shared files. This kind of distributed sharing and collaboration is likely the future of Internet based work for knowledge sharing and development. So the success of certain kinds of P2P may hold back or delay the development of technologies, due to DMCA related fears of prosecution, as well as the development and adoption of information technology based work practices that rely on P2P applications.

This quotation is from Hodder's summary of the article, and it made me want to read the piece in its entirety, but I wonder why Hodder doesn't mention that the article is, in large part, an promotion of BitTorrent, a new software tool for P2P networks. BitTorrent sounds like an improved tool for P2P; a couple of things I like about it are that it finds out how much of a file you already have and arranges it so that you only download the chunks you need, and also it makes sure that users aren't leeching off the network, that they are uploading as well as downloading. ComputerWorld offers this sidebar story of BitTorrent's pros and cons. In a sidebar story of my own, when I was going through my newsfeeds and found this story, I immediately thought of Laurie, since this is her area of interest. Laurie, how's it going? No one has heard from you in a while. Are you on vacation or something?