or so it appears.
[link|http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-8307339.html?tag=lh| Peer to peer: As the revolution recedes]
By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
December 31, 2001, 4:00 a.m. PT

It took a boom and a bust to do it, but peer-to-peer technology is finding its post-Napster place in the world.

Like the Internet itself, peer to peer is settling into a second, more prosaic stage following the bubble of excitement that seemed to stand the world on its head--if only for a moment. Once viewed as a technology that would transform entire industries, peer to peer is now gaining traction primarily as an unglamorous technique for making ordinary business processes more efficient.

Some big projects are still in the works, backed in part by the financial and technical muscle of powerhouses such as Intel, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems. But the biggest buzz--around peer to peer's ability to transform the way computers work together--has passed, making it difficult for smaller companies and developers to finance plans that aren't tied to immediate business returns.