File sharing services, which generally involves serving or downloading digital files over the Internet, are gaining in popularity in South Africa.<\/p>\n
These services usually follow a peer-to-peer (P2P) model where the files are stored on and served by personal computers. <\/p>\n
Some of the most popular services in this space include bittorrent clients, Limewire and Azureus – now called Vuze.<\/p>\n
Because many South African ADSL subscribers are using local-only accounts for downloading large files to cut down on bandwidth costs they are unable to access international file-sharing services. <\/p>\n
To serve these local-only users a number of local torrent search sites sprung up. These include Greenlab (http:\/\/www.greenlab.co.za\/<\/a>) and Bitfarm (http:\/\/www.bitfarm.co.za\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n Globally, P2P file sharing has come under fire for allegedly assisting in the illegal distribution of copyrighted content. Many users, however, argue that these systems are effective ways of distributing open source and creative commons content.<\/p>\n