Yes, but they did not evolve into wha they coud have (peer to peer youtube service etc.). It took much much longer to get to this stage where they are working on exactly that...peer to peer watching movies and music. Kunda Youtube but peer to peer. If it had goverment blessing, we would have it already and noone would know what youtube is.
Good example is torrent add-on for XBMC. Fir eup program, type in something and play directly from internet if it's found. Pick option to save to disk or not. Cool stuff.
But that's XBMC add-on. Torrent guys are working on something similar but on torrent protocol level.
If we extrapolate to bitcoin (xbmc), some private companies will develop their own centralized crypto. (youtube)
Not an appealing future for sure...