Peer-to-Peer beyond File Sharing

Peer-to-peer architectures gained much attention through their main application domain file sharing. First, we analyze the music industry and the architectural innovations of online services for sharing music files on the business model of the music industry. In the second main part of the paper, we generalize our observations to the design of media for the creation of economic value and the social and economic impact of peer-to-peer architectures. We analyze here virtual communities and other peer-to-peer architectures.