Grouper on the watch list..?

For the un-initiated, Grouper is a P2P sharing software. Unlike traditional Gnutella based clients, Grouper claims to be optimized for small personalized sharing of content. It uses concepts from social networks in the creation of sharing communities, many of which are formed on an invite system. It has many advanced features for members of these communities, like IM, group logging (glogs), audio streaming, and of course file sharing. They also claim to encrypt all IM and file transfer exchanges.

I personally use Grouper to share data with colleagues and old friends from school. It is extremely heavy on the system due to its rather complicated GUI, but proves to be a simple and secure way of sharing data (like photos, videos) within groups.

Last week, I came across an article in the LA Times which wrote about Grouper and its possible "mis-uses". Any Grouper users would definitely want to read this - and other might just want to see how the AA's want a piece of anything that is P2P. For some one like me, who is doing research related to P2P networks, this is just not right...!