With tons of people using VPNs today, I don't know if this is as much a
problem anymore. People can ignore all the blogs telling you not to
share anything. Likely the problem has more to do with smart phones, as
the norm for personal computing. There have been gnutella apps for
phones in the past. I haven't checked, but I doubt there is much of that
today. Most older p2p networks (like Winmx) have a lot of enthusiasts
using them. Plenty are happy to share their bandwidth, since in many
cases they aren't themselves downloading things. They just want to
support whats left of their shrinking network.

But to back up your point a little, I bet those long time users (of any
network) seeding files, they think are rare/special, get tickled pink
when they see someone has downloaded one and stays on adding another
seed to the small cult.

Gnutella is still my favorite network. But when I look back on when I
enjoyed it the most, it was before the advent of file hashes and
multi-source downloads. But that's from a old time Napster, DC++, and
IRC user. Hashing files improved the whole thing by leaps and bounds.
But at the same time it and DHT (distributed hash tables) eventually
made it a third rate Bittorrent and a second rate Emule (Kademlia).

Its ironic that hashing files is also something that caused a huge boost
in copyright troll letters. Maybe because hashing caused a huge increase
in efficient file sharing; which it did do. But I tend to believe that
file hashing made it too easy for copyright lawyers to know exactly what
file you downloaded, and how many people you helped get it too. It was
one thing to send someone a letter asking for the cost of a movie or
song, because they really watched you good and caught you red handed.
But is was quite another sending you a letter asking for all the
potential profit they may have lost. Not only from you not paying for
the file, but also for all the people you provided the same freedom to.

The Gnutella developers did a really good job of making the network
scale better and increasing the exacting power of the search function. I
don't think anyone can really complain about that. I remember the hassle
of corrupt files and incomplete downloads with only one source; never to
be seen again. And with the previous scaling issues, a file you were
looking or waiting to finish might be out there on the network. But the
connection between you and that exact file or search result just wasn't
gonna happen. DC++, Napster, and IRC all had those same or similar
problems. With the loss of all those problems, Gnutella also lost a
little bit of the magic; that I also found in those other aging/dead
networks. Anything that is left of that magic, is sure to fade out when
pc2pc connections just become too much of a security concern for the
average user to accept; let alone configure. The safety of a central
"Platform" is just too easy.

If you look at the current bad boys of decentralized networking, you get
even further from that kind of connection. More hashing, mathematical
encrypting, and distance between the users; for the sake of privacy,
security, and anonymity. They are called darknets because what happens
between those peer to peer connections is hidden. But more likely just
hidden from you and in the view of those with the huge amount of
resources to keep an eye on things in there. Most of those systems work
with out needing to configure your firewall. But on those same networks,
you operate inside them as if you aren't firewalled. That's something to
think about, when considering privacy, security, and anonymity.

I've totally hijacked this thread, for the sake of ranting. And I've
hijacked it from this post itself a couple of times. However, looking
around these day, I'm not too sure if anyone will mind.