File Sharing and P2P.

There’s been a lot of smoke in the air between what file sharing and peer-to-peer sharing is and I’m going to clear that up a bit. 

File sharing is the distribution of digitally stored files (usually the various types of new media we discussed over the semester such as MP3s, Videos, E-books and etc.). There are many online applications that promote and facilitate file sharing such as DropBox and Mediafire. In essence, these are legitimate services that often cater to people who are always on the move and need constant access to their files or in some cases actual businesses who use these applications to collaborate across many platforms and departments.

Peer-to-Peer sharing (P2P) is file sharing but, rather than done on a host such as Mediafire or DropBox, it is done directly between two or more people often referred to as "peers". The most popular form of P2P Sharing is the method known torrenting. By torrenting, individuals can connect to many peers, often people they don’t even know, and download files that contain content such as software, movies, music, e-books and more. So what’s the problem? While torrenting sounds great and useful for a lot of people, the problem is that people take advantage of the system and use it to share copyrighted content with each other without the consent of the copyright owner. This practice is known as pirating, and it has becoming synonymous with peer-to-peer sharing thus making the practice of peer-to-peer illegitimate. Pirating has been a big problem across many industries but the players in Hollywood have been hit especially hard.  As stated in the article Digital Pirates Winning the Battle with Studios, despite the efforts of the Warner Bros. Film Studio, by the release date of the movie the Dark Knight the movie had already been downloaded illegally through peer-to-peer programs over 7 million times. Other forms of peer-to-peer sharing include Warez sites, but these sites are less than reputable sources for downloading and often leave users with viruses and key loggers. Finally, the most surprising source of peer-to-peer type activity is through legitimate file sharing sites. People open up accounts and, in small private communities, send out the links to files for others to download thus keeping the activity under the radar.

All in all it’s become a huge problem and corporations and the governments are at a loss for how to stop it. Recently, the owners of the file sharing site MegaUpload were forced to close down their website and prosecuted for facilitating copyright infringement. While it hasn’t stopped peer-to-peer communities sharing pirated files, it was definitely a blow to the system and a deterrent which caused many file sharing sites to close down for fear of persecution.