In the past few weeks, there have been some major shifts in the BitTorrent community which have had a resounding impact on the larger world of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing. They’ve led to some of the largest BitTorrent sites completely changing focus, or figuring out smarter ways to continue sharing files illegally.

Meanwhile, Adobe announced a massively interesting inclusion in their upcoming Flash player 10.1 update – a seemingly innocuous version number that is adding some world-changing P2P technology to Flash video streaming.

I’d like to discuss these opposing trends of illegal versus more legitimate uses of P2P technology, and what they ultimately mean for how we use the Web.

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Microsoft’s iPod competitor, Zune, has been revived with the newly announced Zune HD. But in spite of positive reviews, the overall response from consumers seems to be… well, lukewarm to say the least.

To give you an idea, let’s look at the search volume (via Google Trends) to measure interest for Zune compared to the market-leading iPod over time.

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Music and video streaming services in themselves are nothing new (as YouTube and others can attest to), but what is new is that finally some companies seem to be getting the big content providers on board. Spotify is gathering buzz with its music streaming service, and Voddler is about to launch a similar service for movies and TV series. And guess what? Both can be used for free.

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Spotify, the European peer-to-peer music streaming service that gives its users access to millions of songs for free is gaining more buzz every day. The service already has millions of users and has managed what many thought was impossible: it got the big record labels on board a free service and gained access to their music libraries.

Spotify has deals with Sony BMG, Universal Music, Warner Music, EMI and Merlin. The first four of these are often called the “big four” record companies.

How did Spotify pull this off?

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