The invite-only Darknet

When you make filesharing criminal, you turn all filesharers into criminals. You can of course do it underground and be in some exclusive private groups that share files where membership is invite only. The New York Times has an interesting article about this phenonmenon where such networks are known as "Darknets". Goes to show that you can't kill P2P, only drive it underground.

These are "darknets": exclusive peer-to-peer networks in which membership is based on circles of trust, whose activities are veiled from the general public. And though people who are adept at configuring servers and comfortable with File Transfer Protocol have used such systems for years, a spate of new online services aimed at everyday users is sure to draw new attention to under-the-radar file sharing.