File Sharing

File sharing is a practice of sharing of data in public or private network with authorized accessibility. The data could be in the form of multimedia content like pictures, electronic books, audios or videos or computer programs, documents or any other digital media.

Though files can be shared by copying on a disk or by simple emailing it to others, file sharing implies sharing the files among a network which allows the users in the network to read, modify, copy or print the data. The users may not have the same level of accessibility. Another form of file sharing has the users being given certain amount of space to read and write of files and placing files on a common space allowing others to view and comment.

File sharing was widely adopted in mainframe and multi-user computer systems a few decades ago though now it has been replaced with the File Transfer Protocol(FTP).