Skip navigation

Menu:

Advice

The internet has made it extremely easy to share music or films with friends (and strangers) anywhere. As a parent or carer, you’ve probably already heard your children talk about “file-sharing”, “downloading” or “peer-to-peer’. Young people know these file sharing services by their brand names like Kazaa, LimeWire and BitTorrent—there are lots of them on the internet. File sharing has received a lot of bad publicity because it’s illegal to share music and film or anything which is protected by copyright when you haven’t got permission.

Another risk to children on peer-to-peer is unwelcome content, such as pornographic or violent images. There is some evidence that pornography is being widely shared on the Peer-to-Peer networks and that people purposely misname files to trick others into downloading them. Much of this content may be unpleasant and unsuitable for children, and in some cases may be illegal.

It’s also important to realise that file sharing goes two ways, so it’s a bit like opening the back door to your computer. Along with the music and film, you don’t know what else might find its way in to your computer. File-sharing can make your computer vulnerable to the viruses infecting other machines on the network.

One study found that nearly half of the software files on one peer-to-peer network contained viruses or other nasties. Check out the Tools section to find out how to protect your computer. So you need to make sure that you know what’s being downloaded onto the family computer, if you are not sure the best way is to ask your children!

There are loads of websites where you can download music legally; both to buy and for free. For less than the price of a bus fare, you can download a track from a legal music retailer and keep it for life. Check the summary advice for a great website which has links to over 200 legal music retailers worldwide.