32. Accounting in Peer-to-Peer-Systems

Today’s Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems seem to work fine for file sharing applications. Though, is that true for all kinds of applications or is it just true for file sharing of copyright protected content? In the latter case, clear incentives for sharing exist - users download copyright protected media content for free. Even here free riding is a widespread behavior [11]. Therefore, many file sharing systems introduced incentive systems, like the eMule credit system [192] or BitTorrent [320]. Obviously, for legally used Peer-to-Peer file sharing applications giving incentives to users for sharing their resources in a fair manner is an important feature.