It is used to describe a hyperlink that points to a location within the Internet where the user can download a file.
Originally, P2P was used to distribute large sized files without requiring much bandwidth on the part of any one node.
However, because of sharing issues, such as the lack of seeding of torrents, throttling of a node's file sharing ports by an Internet service provider, or lawsuits because of uploading copyrighted material, direct downloads has become a popular and legal alternative among Leechers.
for these impediments, such as: However, many users see this as quite unnecessary, because they generally know what they need and do not want to go through the site's mechanics (such as filling out forms over and over) to get said file.
Also, there may be bugs in the site's detection or download methods (or both), thus forcing the user to obtain the file directly.