Why? Sometimes, we need to share files from a machine ... its very useful as its makes current directory available as downloadable links...
import SimpleHTTPServer
import SocketServer
PORT = 8000
Handler = SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler
httpd = SocketServer.TCPServer(("", PORT), Handler)
print "serving at port", PORT
httpd.serve_forever()
Or,
python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000