Last week's Skype guest speaker

Last Wednesday in class we listened to a guest speaker, David Brown of Perfiliate, through a Skype call. Before this class, I'd never heard of Skype before. The only voice over internet service I remember was something called Dial Pad, which in the late 90's - early 2000's, was a free service for anyone to use. It was surprisingly easy for a high schooler to create an account and make prank calls to California (...not that I would ever do that!). Listening to David speak in class, I was surprised at how clear the Skype call sounded; if I hadn't known, I'd have thought David was standing at the front of the room with Professor Brown.

David talked a bit about his company and pay per click advertising, but I found it most interesting what he had to say about security on the internet. He informed us that half of all computers have some form of spyware installed. Most of this spyware originates from Peer to Peer programs, such as Kazaa, that collect information about where you surf on the internet. This information is then sold off to other companies for research or other purposes. Hearing this information got me thinking about illegal file sharing programs like Kazaa. I wonder why there isn't a peer to peer program that could offer legal and free music downloads funded by advertising similar to Google. Google makes billions of dollars a year through their ads, why couldn't a file sharing program work the same way? I wonder if anyone has ever thought of that. I'm sure there must be more to it, but wouldn't it make sense to pay either individual artists or record labels through advertising money generated? I know I would put up with a screen full of ads if I could download music for free. Does anyone know if this concept has ever been tested?