The US Supreme Court is poised to hear the case MGM v Grokster, in which 28 of the biggest entertainment companies in the world are suing the makers of Kazaa, Morpheus and Grokster, the most popular of the peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing applications. The suit could set a precedent for action against other technologies; it could also effectively shut down file-sharing.

There’s no question that P2P is the channel of choise for the illegal distribution of copyrighted materials. There are plenty of legitimate uses, however, and shutting down P2P would be like shutting down telephone networks because criminals use the phone to conduct illegal activities. But try telling that to the RIAA.

From a communication standpoint, we’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of P2P’s potential. One of the more interesting uses to which businesses have put the broad P2P networks came when Priceline released a new TV commercial to the file-sharing world before it premiered on television. In the spot, Priceline spokesman William Shatner finds himself out of a job, replaced by Leonard Nimoy. The file was a hit and spread through the P2P networks like wildfire, generating a lot more buzz than it would have had it simply started running on television. Then there was the British ad for a Ford vehicle that ended with the decapitation of a cat (computer-generated, we were assured; no animals were actually harmed). The ad never made the airwaves in the UK after animal rights activists raised objections, but somehow it found its way into the P2P space where it generated a considerable amount of publicity—and Ford never had to spend a time in media buys.

Now a site has cropped up that is documenting all the legitimate uses of P2P—or, as the site calls it, “Substantial, Non-Infringing Use (SNIU).” The site recollects the old bookmark pages of the early Web, with links leading to articles covering SNIU,  like the article suggesting that P2P could be the answer to scaling RSS (which will eventually cause untold problems as an ever-increasing number of news readers hit sites every few minutes, draining bandwidth).

The site owners are soliciting more examples. Even if you don’t have any to contribute, spending time on the site could lead you to an idea or two for your own use of P2P.  If you do have an example, by all means send it along.  It’s important that this baby not be thrown out with the bathwater before we can even figure out how to leverage it.