P2P File Sharing

File sharing is simply the sharing of digital files.

P2P sharing is peer-to-peer sharing.  This is essentially a derivative version of file sharing, in which anonymous users help out anonymous users acquire whatever files they want or need.

From what I remember, P2P sharing started with Napster, then Napster got shut down and everyone moved to Kazaa.  At some point, Kazaa lost its cool and people switched to Limewire.  Eventually, people discovered torrents, and to this day, torrents are the most popular medium for P2P sharing.

Currently, it seems as though File sharing or P2P sharing is a euphemism for piracy.  This is a topic of its own, really.  But in Pfanner's article "Should Online Scofflaws Be Denied Web Access," there is a quote that I disagree with on the bottom.
Tim Kuik, director of Brein, a Dutch antipiracy organization, says:

"If you put 200 VCRs in your garage and start making and selling copies of films, you will get a visit from the police.  If you do it from a Web site, everybody says, ‘Hey, freedom of information’ ”.


Piracy is convenient.  It is virtually free and requires less effort than actually making a purchase.  P2P software and piracy cannot be comfortably compared with real-life piracy.

First of all, I have yet to see pirates sell copies of content they have downloaded.  Unless you're on Canal St., profit isn't the intent of pirating.
Second, online piracy is definitely enforceable.  I personally know people that got visits from the law for downloading copyrighted media.  The reason it isn't often enforced is that file sharing is still a grey area - it is not the same as stealing and copying in real life.  Also, with encryption of data and VPNs and such, tangible data is much harder to acquire and trails are harder to trace.

The Next New Thing

I'm no Steve Jobs... this one is tough.

Netflix and Hulu are wildly popular, and recently Gaikai has come up with streaming video games of all things.  It requires a pretty solid Internet connection though.  Some day, it may be possible that everything will be streamed and all you need is Javascript and a solid Internet.  Imagine how much you can do with how little you carry!

Maybe Google Earth can have an expansion in which one can view public places through the eyes of a virtual person walking around.  That would be awesome.

Also, many companies are rumored to start providing full-blown digital services.  Hard copies will be a thing of the past.  Considering the evolution of Internet efficiency, I think this is a great idea and would complement the new media field very well.  The only problem is dependence on storage of the licenses you bought.

Privacy & Confidentiality

I've said many times in previous blog posts that new media is highly promoted through convenience.  The downside of this convenience is that it is more prone to violating of privacy.

Additionally, real life and Internet do not blend rules very well.  Getting unauthorized access to someone's Facebook account is different from reading their private journal, and the consequences of doing so can be severely different.

The standard of privacy is also changing at a steep slope over the recent years.  I saw a picture recently (can't find, unfortunately) about Facebook and default privacy settings.  At launch, Facebook had nearly everything only available to friends - wall posts, pictures, stuff like that.  Nowadays, default, Facebook has many things open to the public.  The first thing anyone should do when they make a Facebook account is adjust their privacy settings accordingly, but the problem with that new users are...well...new and unless someone nudges this towards them, privacy is not their first concern.