Today is Valentine’s Day, a day of sharing between loved ones; A perfect occasion to recognize how important file-sharing is to the freedom of the internet. It’s not only SOPA and PIPA that we have to worry about now, it’s about the future of file-sharing servers in the wake of the arrest of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom. The U.S. Federal Government seems to be on a rampage to bring copyright infringer’s to justice, which is already instilling fear in other established file-sharing sites, including Amazon, Dropbox, and Rapidshare.

FileSonic has already bowed to pressure after the following message appeared on their homepage:

It reads “All sharing functionality on Filesonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally.”

Mike Masnick, editor of the Techdirt blog, expressed concern about legitimate services (“who do things like de-duplification, or have legitimate backup services”) going under as a result of pressure from the law.

“If you’re running Amazon S3 or Dropbox, do you now suddenly change how you do business, just to avoid the possibility of being accused of racketeering and criminal copyright infringement? That’s worrisome.”

One file-share service that claims they will never be taken offline has recently emerged from the woodwork. Tribler was developed by researchers at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands as a way to share files without centralized servers.

“With Tribler, we have achieved zero-seconds downtime over the past six years, all because we don’t rely on shaky foundations such as DNS, web servers or search portraits,” says Tribler leader Dr. Pouwelse.

WebPal knows that file-sharing is all about content, collaboration and control. It easily enables users to share documents with other WebPal users or through email, tracks updates through an activity log and allows admins to control access to all documents.

The Internet and file-sharing go hand-in-hand. The law and the entertainment industry may have no choice but to take a leaf out of the Care Bear book and accept that sharing is caring.