Big banks have also entered the P2P business, with services such as Popmoney in America and Paym in Britain.What is changing is that such services are getting ever easier and faster to use, with some now offering instantaneous payments.
Everyone gets to feel good.The most common P2P offering is an unsecured personal loan, often to refinance credit-card debt.
Most of the content exchanged using P2P software violates the copyright of music and movie firms.
In October, trade groups representing the entertainment industry went so far as to petition America's Supreme Court to consider whether makers of P2P software should face "secondary liability" for copyright infringement by their users.
"P2P doesn't need a case made in its favour it's just technology.
If P2P-Next has its way, televisions, computers and mobile phones will all support a standardised P2P network for streaming content distribution in the future.
A 90% drop in the cost of bandwidth.There were other problems with P2P.
An alternative is peer-to-peer (P2P) networking, in which data are distributed by users to each other rather than being downloaded from a central source.
There are now more than 60 firms claiming P2P status, according to the O'Reilly Network, a website on emerging technologies.
MyCIO.com plans to use P2P technology to let IT managers share fixes for new computer viruses.Some start-ups are even trying to turn Gnutella and FreeNet, two Napster alternatives, into marketable products.
As with other P2P lending sites, borrowers are required to provide personal information about themselves to reassure lenders.
