Most File Sharing Happens at Night

February 13, 2008

If you do most of your legally questionable (or totally legal and legit!) file sharing at night you're not alone. According to a recent article from the Times Online most file sharing — which commonly takes the form of downloading movies, music and TV shows via peer-to-peer programs like Limewire, BitTorrent and KaZaA — happens at night. In fact about eight million people are on file-sharing networks at any one time. Here's more:

There are more than 900 million illegal music files available for download on file-sharing networks. File-sharing was the most used service on the internet last year. The heaviest usage was observed during the night, when the percentage of file-sharing traffic rose to up to 95 percent of total internet traffic.

The numbers shocked me a bit. I'd assume more than eight million people are on networks at any given time and I certainly thought more people downloaded documents, programs, music and movies during the day while at work. I guess managers can stop worrying all their employees are downloading and watching movies instead of working. When do you do most of your file sharing?

Photo courtesy of NBC

News File Sharing

10 Comments

pixelsugar 5 years 13 weeks

I'm not surprised at all. All of us hardcore geeks who are up coding after midnight are usually connected to these things while we're working. At least most everybody I know is.

tdamji 5 years 13 weeks

how am i not surprised by all the capitalist remarks?

jazspin 5 years 13 weeks

This doesn't really surprise me - but I am kind of amused that everyone seems to assume that file sharing automatically means illegal downloads. There are plenty of legit reasons to share files (even music!).

The Mac Diva 5 years 13 weeks

I'm not surprised about that. I do most of my file sharing early in the morning or late in the evening. I work for myself. I usually send work to clients early in the morning or late night. There is a lot of file sharing going on in my home, but it's all legit.ò

x_juicyfruit 5 years 13 weeks

Interesting. The only thing I use to obtain music is the CD's I already own, or iTunes. Sometimes my friends and I will burn each other CD's, but that's about it.

kaenai 5 years 13 weeks

I can't imagine doing that at work! But then again, not all file sharing is with illegal programs/music/etc. There is some legitimate sharing happening, though, for those who may not be aware of it. For example, people who create HD graphics and video (or audio?)may need to send it to someone for review, and it's may just be easier to use a file share site, or to use a program to split and then concatenate later, especially if they're doing this at a great distance. I can imagine that people who are doing the not-so-legal sharing would want to do it on their own networks, and not take a chance at work, where they are sure to be prosecuted for it once caught, as opposed to at home, where they'd feel 'safer'.

jenehfur 5 years 13 weeks

who in their right mind would download stuff at work? let alone even have those kind of peer to peer sharing programs on their computer in the first place?? i'm not surprised by the increase in night time activity at all, seems pretty obvious to me!!