The dam-breaking success of YouTube and Apple's iTunes Video Store neither of which existed prior to 2005--has unleashed a huge new flow of digital video on the Internet, and many consumers now spend hours a day streaming or downloading everything from home movies to live sports and prime-time TV series. Because video files are so large compared with the Web pages and e-mail messages that used to dominate Internet traffic, backbone lines are under strain, and backbone operators such as AT&T and Verizon and Internet service providers such as Comcast are facing new costs they can't easily recoup, given the flat-rate pricing of most consumer broadband Internet access plans.

Hui Zhang, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University who studies broadband networks, says that "2006 will be remembered as the year of Internet video. Consumers have shown that they basically want unlimited access to the content owners' video. But what if the entire Internet gets swamped in video traffic?"

This time around, the Internet may be saved by the unlikeliest of rescuers: the builders of peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. In the minds of many consumers and many studio executives P2P networks are still synonymous with digital piracy. After all, Napster, Kazaa, and other early peer-to-peer networks were playgrounds for copyright violators, who downloaded millions of music files they hadn't paid for. But today a number of researchers and entrepreneurs are arguing that peer-to-peer technology which allows network members to retrieve content by tapping into the hard drives of other members who have already downloaded that content--is also great for distributing legitimately purchased, copyright-protected music and video. It might even lessen the burden on service providers and content distributors. Read the article