File sharing

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File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information, such as computer programs, multi-media (audio, video), documents, or electronic books. It may be implemented in a variety of storage, transmission, and distribution models. Common methods are manual sharing using removable media (CD, DVD, floppy diskette, magnetic tapes, flash memory), centralized computer file server installations on computer networks, World Wide Web-based hyperlinked documents, and the use of distributed peer-to-peer (P2P) networking.

The increasing popularity of the mp3 music format in the late 1990s led to the release and growth of Napster and other software designed to aid in the sharing of electronic files. Other popular networks include Gnutella, eDonkey2000, the now-defunct Kazaa network, and BitTorrent.

Many file sharing programs and services have been shut down due to litigation by groups such as the RIAA and MPAA. During the early 2000s, the fight against copyright infringement expanded into lawsuits against individual users of file sharing software.

The economic impact on media industries is disputed; although publishers and copyright holders claim economic damage, some studies have suggested that file sharing is not the primary cause of declines in sales. File sharing remains widespread, with mixed public opinion about the morality of the practice for commercial material.

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File sharing

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Contents

[edit] History

Main article: File sharing timeline

Files were first exchanged on removable media. Computers were able to access remote files using filesystem mounting, bulletin board systems (1978), Usenet (1980), and FTP servers (1985). Internet Relay Chat (1988) and Hotline (1997) enabled users to communicate remotely through chat and to exchange files. The mp3 encoding, which was standardized in 1991 and which substantially reduced the size of audio files, grew to widespread use in the late 1990s. In 1998, MP3.com and Audiogalaxy were established, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was unanimously passed, and the first mp3 player devices were launched. MP3.com offered music by unsigned artists, and grew to serve 4 million audio downloads daily.

In 1979, Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis created USENET.[1] It is a store and forward network, and was initially based on the UUCP protocol. In addition to sending text-based messages, it allows users to encode files and distribute them to participating subscribers of Usenet newsgroups. It was later extended to an Internet Protocol-based transport using the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP). USENET remains one of the largest file sharing networks.[citation needed]

In June 1999, Napster was released. Although Napster does not strictly fit into the profile of peer-to-peer software,[2] it is generally perceived as being the first peer-to-peer file sharing system. In the Napster case, an online service provider cannot use the "transitory network transmission" safe harbor in the DMCA if they have control of the network with a server. Many P2P products will, by their very nature, flunk this requirement, just as Napster did. [3]. Full P2P software like USENET does meet that requirement thus cannot be shut down. Napster provided a service where they indexed and stored file information that users of Napster made available on their computers for others to download, and the files were transferred directly between the host and client users after authorization by Napster. Shortly after the A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc. loss in court Napster blocked all copyright content from being downloaded.

Gnutella, eDonkey2000, and Freenet were released in 2000, as MP3.com and Napster were facing litigation. Gnutella, released in March, was the first decentralized file sharing network. In the Gnutella network, all connecting software was considered equal, and therefore the network had no central point of failure. In July, Freenet was released and became the first anonymity network. In September the eDonkey2000 client and server software was released.

In 2001, Kazaa was released. Its FastTrack network was distributed, though unlike Gnutella, it assigned more traffic to 'supernodes' to increase routing efficiency. The network was proprietary and encrypted, and the Kazaa team made substantial efforts to keep other clients such as Morpheus off of the FastTrack network. In July 2001, Napster lost in court and was shut down. The Audiogalaxy Satellite client grew in popularity, and the LimeWire client and BitTorrent protocol were released. Kazaa was the most popular file sharing program until its decline in 2004, despite bundled malware and legal battles in the Netherlands, Australia, and the United States. In 2002, a Tokyo district court ruling shut down File Rogue and an RIAA lawsuit effectively shut down Audiogalaxy.

From 2002 through 2003, a number of popular BitTorrent services were established, including Suprnova.org, isoHunt, TorrentSpy, and The Pirate Bay. In 2002, the RIAA was filing lawsuits against Kazaa users. As a result of such lawsuits, many universities added file sharing regulations in their school administrative codes. With the shut down of eDonkey in 2005, eMule became the dominant client of the eDonkey network. In 2006, police raids took down the Razorback2 eDonkey server and temporarily took down The Pirate Bay. Pro-file sharing demonstrations take place in Sweden in response to the Pirate Bay raid. In 2009, the Pirate Bay trial ends in a guilty verdict for the primary founders of the tracker.

As of 2009, Gnutella via Limewire, the eDonkey network via eMule, and BitTorrent via uTorrent and Azureus and the trackers & indexing sites are the most popular networks.[citation needed] Services like iTunes account for much of legal music sales, and sites like YouTube and various one-click hosting providers allow file sharing through uploads to their servers.

[edit] Anonymity

Anonymous networking technologies have been developed to allow the exchange of data between computers and users in a way that obscures either the user and its network location or the destination of a data access, or both. A popular method is the onion routing concept, prominently implemented in the tor network. Such methods are often used to transfer contentious or illegal material and copyrighted works in violation of legal or acceptable use policies.[citation needed] Many current[when?] implementations incur high overhead,[citation needed] making them slow or hard to use. However, in locations where very fast Internet access is common, a number of anonymous file-sharing programs have already reached high popularity.[citation needed] Examples of anonymous P2P networks are ANts P2P, RShare, Freenet, I2P, GNUnet and Entropy.

[edit] Copyright issues

Main article: Copyrighted content on file sharing networks
Demonstration in Sweden in support of file sharing piracy, 2006.

A significant number of people share files in a way that infringes on the rights of copyright holders. Copyright holders have challenged the legality of file sharing networks. This has led to litigation by industry bodies against certain private individual file sharers.

The legal issues surrounding file sharing have been the subject of debate and conferences.[4]

Digital rights management is intended to curb copyright infringement through file sharing.

[edit] Economic impact

Music sales have globally dropped from approximately $38 billion in 1999 to $32 billion in 2003.[5] A number of studies have found that file sharing has a negative impact on record sales. [6] Using aggregate data Stan J. Liebowitz argues that file sharing had a significant negative impact on record sales.[7] A widely cited 2007 paper, the first to analyze downloads on file sharing networks, concludes that file sharing has no negative effect on CD sales.[8] CNET reported that data gathered from tracking downloading on OpenNap servers suggested that illegal downloads would cause only small decreases in album sales, and possibly would slightly improve the sales of top albums.[9] In March 2007, a 20 percent one-year drop in CD sales was taken by the Wall Street Journal as the latest sign of the shift in the way people acquire their music.[citation needed] BigChampagne LLC has reported that around one billion songs a month are being traded on illegal file-sharing networks. As a result of this decline in CD sales, a significant number of record stores are going out of business “...making it harder for consumers to find and purchase older titles in stores.”[10]

The MPAA had reported that American studios lost $2.3 billion to Internet piracy in 2005, representing approximately one third of the total cost of film piracy in the United States. [11] The MPAA's estimate has been doubted by commentators since it is based on the conpect that one download was equivalent to one lost sale, and downloaders might not purchase the movie even if illegal downloading were not an option.[12][13][14] These numbers are further suspicious due to the private nature of the study, which cannot be publicly checked for methodology or validity.[15][16][17] On January 22, 2008, as the MPAA was lobbying for a bill which would compel universities to crack down on piracy, it was alleged that MPAA figures on piracy in colleges were inflated by up to 300%.[18][19]

Piracy rates of one-quarter or more for popular software and operating systems are common,[citation needed] even in countries and regions with strong intellectual property enforcement, such as the US or the EU.[20] The pirated software is distributed through file sharing.[citation needed]

[edit] Public perception and usage

In July 2008, 20 percent of Europeans used file sharing networks to obtain music, while 10 percent use paid-for digital music services such as iTunes.[21]

In January 2006, 32 million Americans over the age of 12 had downloaded at least one feature length movie from the Internet, 80 percent of whom had done so exclusively over P2P. Of the population sampled only 40 percent felt that downloading copyrighted movies and music off the Internet constituted a very serious offense, opposed to 78 percent who felt that of taking movies and music from a store.[22]

In February 2008 The LA Times Blog published results of a US campus attitude survey which showed that 64 percent of respondents download music regularly through file-sharing networks and other unauthorized sources. The respondents were also asked to rate on a 1 to 7 scale "how nervous they were about being punished for illegal downloading" (1 being "not concerned" and 7 being "extremely concerned"), two-thirds answered 1 (43 percent) or 2 (24 percent). Only 4 percent answered 5 or 6, and none answered 7, "extremely concerned". [23][24]

75% of American citizens polled in the Tiscali UK survey are aware of what is legal and illegal in relation to their file sharing. However, there is a divide as to whom they feel the legal burden should be placed on. reveals that 49% of people believe P2P companies should be held responsible for illegal file sharing on their networks, while 18% view the individual file sharers as the culprits. 18% of Americans either didn’t know or chose not to answer.[25]

According to a poll, 75% of young voters in Sweden (18-20) support file sharing when presented with the statement: "I think it is OK to download files from the Net, even if it is illegal." Of the respondents, 38% said they "adamantly agreed" while 39% said they "partly agreed".[26]

60% of the general public download music because of a limited budget, according to the Tiscali UK survey. A common attitude concerning music downloading is that of ‘why should one pay for something when they can get it for free?' [27]

[edit] Risks

Researchers have examined potential security risks including the release of personal information, bundled spyware, and viruses downloaded from the network.[28] As of 2003, no cases of identity theft over file sharing networks had been reported.[29] Some proprietary file sharing clients have included bundled malware, though open source programs typically have not.

Recently, there has been a drastic increase of inadvertent P2P file sharing of personal and sensitive information. This became evident in 2009 at the beginning of President Obama's administration. On February 26, 2009 the blueprints to the helicopter Marine One were made available to the public through a breach in security through a P2P file sharing site. Access to this information has the potential of being detrimental to national security.[30]

Two days previously, the “Today Show” reported that more than 150,000 tax returns, 25,800 student loan applications and 626,000 credit reports were all free and open to the public to peruse.[31]

Over the last six years identity theft has become much more of a problem. On July 9, 2008 there was another inadvertent revealing of vast amounts of personal information through careless use of a P2P site. The “names, dates of birth, and social security numbers of about 2,000 of the firms clients, including Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer were all exposed.”[32]

In an attempt to avoid these security leaks, current legislation in the United States is being debated, the Informed P2P User Act.[33] According to this act, it would be mandatory for individuals to be aware of the risks associated with peer-to-peer file sharing before purchasing the software. Informed consent of the user prior to use of these programs would be required. In addition, this act would allow users to block and remove P2P file sharing software from their computers at any time.[34] The Federal Trade Commission would enforce these regulations.

[edit] See also

Internet portal

[edit] References

  1. ^ From Usenet to CoWebs: interacting with social information spaces, Christopher Lueg, Danyel Fisher, Springer (2003), ISBN 1852335327, ISBN 9781852335328
  2. ^ http://books.google.ca/books?id=KeIENcC2BPwC&pg=PA532&lpg=PA532&dq=napster+first&source=bl&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2#PPA532,M1
  3. ^ http://w2.eff.org/IP/P2P/p2p_copyright_wp.php
  4. ^ Will File-Sharing Kill the Copyright Industries? - West LegalEdcenter
  5. ^ Alejandro Zentner, "File Sharing and International Sales of Copyrighted Music: An Empirical Analysis with a Panel of Countries", The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, Vol. 5, Issue 1 (2005)
  6. ^ Stan J. Liebowitz, "File Sharing: Creative Destruction or Just Plain Destruction?"; Rafael Rob and Joel Waldfogel, "Piracy on the High C's: Music Downloading, Sales Displacement, and Social Welfare in a Sample of College Students"; Alejandro Zentner, "Measuring the Effect of File Sharing on Music Purchases", The Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 49, No. 1 (April 2006)
  7. ^ in a series of papers (2005, 2006)
  8. ^ Felix Olberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf, "The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis" Journal of Political Economy, 2007, 115(1):1-42; Retrieved on 2008-10-22 from Koleman Strumpf's website February 2007,
  9. ^ Music sharing doesn't kill CD sales, study says - CNET NewsCNET News.com staff writer John Borland reports, “even high levels of file-swapping seemed to translate into an effect on album sales that was "statistically indistinguishable from zero".
  10. ^ http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB117444575607043728-lMyQjAxMDE3NzI0MTQyNDE1Wj.html Wallstreet Journal Website
  11. ^ "SWEDISH AUTHORITIES SINK PIRATE BAY: Huge Worldwide Supplier of Illegal Movies Told No Safe Harbors for Facilitators of Piracy!" (PDF). MPAA. 2006-05-31. http://www.MPAA.org/press_releases/2006_05_31.pdf. 
  12. ^ Gross, Daniel (2004-11-21). "Does a Free Download Equal a Lost Sale?". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/business/yourmoney/21view.html?ex=1258693200&en=a210357f5dcc8523&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt. Retrieved on 2007-07-16. 
  13. ^ Oberholzer, Felix; Strumpf, Koleman (March 2004). The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis. UNC Chapel Hill. http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf. 
  14. ^ Schwartz, John (2004-04-05). "A Heretical View of File Sharing". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=technology&res=9C02E2D91139F936A35757C0A9629C8B63. Retrieved on 2007-07-16. 
  15. ^ Fisher, Ken (2006-05-05). "The problem with MPAA's shocking piracy numbers". Ars Technica. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060505-6761.html. Retrieved on 2007-07-15. 
  16. ^ "Movie Piracy Cost 6.1 Billion". torrentfreak.com. 2006-05-03. http://torrentfreak.com/movie-piracy-cost-61-billion/. Retrieved on 2007-07-16. 
  17. ^ "Hollywood study examines costs of film piracy". ZDNet (Reuters). 2006-05-03. http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6068198.html. Retrieved on 2007-07-16. 
  18. ^ "MPAA admits college piracy numbers grossly inflated". arstechnica.com. 2008-01-22. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080122-oops-MPAA-admits-college-piracy-numbers-grossly-inflated.html. Retrieved on 2008-01-22. 
  19. ^ "2008 shaping up to be "Year of Filters" at colleges, ISPs". arstechnica.com. 2008-01-22. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080115-filtering-could-come-to-isps-colleges-in-2008.html. Retrieved on 2008-01-22. 
  20. ^ Moisés Naím, Illicit, How smugglers, traffickers and copycats are hijacking the global economy, Arrow Books, London, 2007, pg.15
  21. ^ BBC NEWS | Technology | Warning letters to 'file-sharers'
  22. ^ Solutions Research Group - Movie File-Sharing Booming: Study
  23. ^ Campus attitudes: a microsample | Bit Player | Los Angeles Times
  24. ^ The Georgetown Voice | University warnings and RIAA lawsuits fail to deter file-sharing - September 30, 2004
  25. ^ http://www.ispreview.co.uk/news/EkFVulFEAVbPsdkYcg.html
  26. ^ The Local - Young voters back file sharing
  27. ^ http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.htmlres=9F04E6D6153AF93BA2575AC0A9659C8B63&pagewanted=1
  28. ^ By M. Eric Johnson, Dan McGuire, Nicholas D. Willey The Evolution of the Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Industry and the Security Risks for Users
  29. ^ Morris, Alan (2003-08-22). "Testimony of Mr. Alan Morris about Pornography, Technology and Process: Problems and Solutions on Peer-to-Peer Networks". United States Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, DC. http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=623&wit_id=2277. Retrieved on 2006-11-20. 
  30. ^ [ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10224080-93.html]
  31. ^ [ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10224080-93.html]
  32. ^ [ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10224080-93.html]
  33. ^ [1]
  34. ^ [2]

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

v • d • e
File sharing
Networks and protocols
Decentralized
Ares · BitTorrent · eDonkey · FastTrack · Freenet · GNUnet · Gnutella · Gnutella2 · Kad · OneSwarm • OpenFT • Overnet · Soulseek · WASTE
Semi-centralized
Centralized
Comparisons of clients
URI standards
Uses
related
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