Who actually provides P2P downloads?

"you" might make more sense as "they"

Er, I do. I share whatever happens to be on my hard drive at the time (limited space means I burn off to CD when I can). Give a little, take a little (or in my case, a LOT). I feel it's worth the grief of my 56k dial up, cos I get so much stuff that I'm looking for. It really is a small inconvenience.

What I'd really like to know is who is on the other side of the equation. If I am taking so much, and I'm damn sure there are lots of others out there, who's sharing and not downloading??? Where does all this stuff come from? Is the sum of the parts really greater than the whole?? Or is there some mythical mp3 Sierra Madre somewhere with unlimited bandwidth??

I used to, but it seemed a ridiculous thing to do, not having broadband.

the simple answer is: COLLEGE STUDENTS

I do. Broadband connection, 80 gigs of mp3s, sharing 24/7, baybee.

Damn but I miss AudioGalaxy.

Soulseek.org seems to be a good answer to that pesky AG problem. I've found a good amount of stuff over the past week. Its a tad harder to use that AG, but after a week, I pretty much have the program down.

i used to run an ftp server on my 28.8 dialup connection! now that i have broadband i have to be careful not to go over my 3gig/month limit, so i don't share as much... sad but i can't really do anything about it without being up for thousand dollar monthly bills.

Yes, Soulseek is the best replacement for AG up to now (despite all the miserly bitter old Ssk users who were there from the start and bizarrely resent all these AG refugees coming onto THEIR program and increasing the content hundredfold).

I have broadband, share whatever music is on my hd at that moment in time. And I take a mean righteous pleasure in hunting down and banning the people on high-speed connections who are sucking songs offa me and NOT sharing. The fiends. I am however, a benevolent sharer and will not ban the non-sharing users who are on dial-up. I feel this to be the height of p2p etiquette, am I wrong and mean and bad or right?

Yes, dial up share is a hard call. I just share stuff i know no-one else seems to have. Two uploads and i'm screwed so it's one upload at a time.

But HEY HEY broadband users and ~~~~~EVERYBODY~~~~~ please make the most of this historical moment where the marketeers of shite can have their addictive stranglehold broken so people can pay only for stuff they already know is quality. Let the real music prevail. Kill ugly rock-star lifestyle cocaine music industry executives.

This is a freedom of information issue. You should have the right to try before you buy. Otherwise you risk just buying useless garbage. Freedom of information is more constructive than 5 multinationals

Everything I download I keep sharable. But I confess I never rip anything from CD to make available.

I have an ADSL connection. However I notice very few people succesfully get anything from me. Far more requests fail than succeed and I don't know why.

if i'm lucky i can download a song a day on kazaa, yet people download like thirty a day from me. it's not fair!