Peer-to-peer file sharing has been a hot topic on all well-known technology channels on the Web during the last couple of years, with a surge in the last couple of weeks.

Take the article The Shadow Internet in the January 2005 issue of Wired Online, for example: it describes in great detail through which secured distribution mechanism games and movies are bootlegged before they are officially released.

The need for video footage of the Indian Ocean tsunami—mostly satiated by heavy distribution of .torrent files—is just one example of the catalysts triggering increased interest during the last month.

Today, over 20% of the programs listed in the Download Top 50 of Download.Com, a popular download site for Windows shareware and freeware, is related to file sharing.

During last year several P2P file sharing tools have arisen with a different, somewhat sophisticated twist to it.

Among those tools is Grouper, a free, beautifully designed private media sharing program developed under the guidance of ex-AOL executives and Spinner.com founders Josh Felser and Dave Samuel.

Grouper was covered by Robin Good on this site when it was first launched; this week I update that review to reflect Grouper's current capabilities. As Robin pointed out in the original review Grouper is free of any type of adware and spyware.

This time I rewrote almost the entire review from scratch after testing the most recent version hands-on.

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I highly recommend that you read the revised review, including pros, cons and suggestions for further reading.