[FairOpinion]

Interesting.
I can see it is a real problem, but all the bright people out there should still be able to come up something other than destroying people's computers. If it is so decentralized, how would the music companies even be sure who is downloading the illegal stuff?

[adam_az]

I can see it is a real problem, but all the bright people out there should still be able to come up something other than destroying people's computers. If it is so decentralized, how would the music companies even be sure who is downloading the illegal stuff?

They write a special client program that acts on the network similarly to how the program a downloader uses would, but is automated to connect to other computers in the peer to peer network and search for specific files.

Because the protocol is known and open, as long as it plays by the rules, you don't have any way to know that they are probing you. (of course, you have to be running a program that connects you to the p2p net, they can't just examine the contents of your hard disk over the internet. well, there are ways to do that too, but that's not what we are talking about here ;) )