File Sharing
10:00 PM. A 13-year-old sits hunched in front of his computer, impatiently eyeing the progress bar on his screen. "Only five more minutes left," he mutters. Five minutes elapse. A popular song begins to blare from the computer's speakers. "That's good music," the boy thinks to himself. "I wonder what else this band did...” He moves the cursor over to "Fear: The Album," and clicks. By morning, he has obtained all of Fear's work, no trips to the record store included. But that is only half the deal: The boy never surrendered a cent to obtain Fear's work. Not only that but now in his hard drive is a recording of Ultimate Impact II: Revolution and a copy of Micromedia AnimationMaker.
While this proposition may sound extraordinarily tempting, one must consider the ethical (and legal) aspects of downloading music, movies and software. In essence, downloading media and such is akin to stealing. Is downloading an entire album off the Internet for free similar to walking into a record store and stealing a compact disk? According to most record company executives, it is. Studies have shown downloading music hurts record sales, since most people, if given a choice, will obtain anything for free as opposed to for a fee. The number of compact disks bought is steadily declining.
How does peer-to-peer file sharing technology work? Computers participating in sharing networks connect to a central directory server, which has a list of all files residing on network users' hard drives. When actually downloading a file, the sharing software first connects to the directory server, obtains an address of a user's hard drive, connects to the user's computer, and downloads the file. Here is a diagram of this process:
Purple arrow (step one): Computer A requests a file from the directory server.
Blue arrow (step two): Directory server sends Computer A location of file request, Computer B
Black arrow (step three): Computer A sends request to Computer B for file.
Red arrow (step four): Computer B sends file to Computer A
The searching process usually takes less than a second to complete. Millions of computers are connected to the directory server; so many people claim, "If it's not on [a file sharing network], it doesn't exist."
So how can one legally skip the record store? Use a legal file download service such as Apple iTunes or (the new) Napster. At 99 cents a song, one can cheaply (and legally) obtain their favorite music without even setting foot outside their door. At close to 500,000 songs, these legal networks can rival the size of smaller illegal networks, making them worthwhile (and extraordinarily close to free.) While you cannot yet download software and movies legally off of a service like you can with music, walking over to your local Blockbuster or CompUSA is good exercise ;-).