P2P Filesharing vs. The Web

The Importance of writes "The recent RIAA lawsuits have raised many questions and issues, but the focus has been on P2P filesharing. Before there was P2P, though, there was filesharing via webservers. There doesn't seem to be much complaint about the RIAA shutting down people who upload MP3s to their homepage. Why do many people seem to treat http filesharing different than P2P filesharing? LawMeme has one answer."

Comments

People dont share much anymore

[adamruck]

people dont file share anymore.. for the most part they just leach. Thats why if I use networks like direct connect that force people to share. People still try and get around that though.. its kinda sad.

Re:People dont share much anymore

[Ishin]

People don't share because of the enormous constrains on upload bandwidth that broadband providers have made. My DSL line only has 256kbps up, with it only realistically transferring about 200kbps. Quite a bit better than dialup, but still pathetic when you're trying to transfer hundreds of megs of data.

As a prior post mentioned, prosecution is another problem. The RIAA is attempting to quench the problem at the source, which is definitely the easier way to go.

I'm not a big fan of neo-modus/direct connect, mainly because of DC++. It's made the sharing requirements for Direct Connect irrelevant. People get on as many networks as they want, and share 2-3 slots with about 15KB of upload between them all between about 10 different networks, making them effectively just leeches.

Plus the requirements for DC servers have gotten so bloated that they basically require some amount of spoofing to even get on. I haven't used DC in more than a year, and the last time I did, most servers were requiring you to share 30-50 gigs of media, bigger than many casual file sharers actual hard drive.

Re:People dont share much anymore

[Frymaster]

Yeah, imagine that. People don't want to be prosecuted.

it's more than that: people, once they understand the whole client/server model, get really slaved to that idea. they use their p2p app as a client used to retreive stuff from servers.

this is why there hasn't been much outrage over the whole ftp/web sharing prosecution. joe average looks at the servers as being different, more dedicated. the servers as the "pushers and pimps" the clients are just "casual users and johns".

at least that's how they see it.

Re:People dont share much anymore

[AKnightCowboy]

Also, restricting access to those with 50 gig share limits(I use hubs with 80 gig and higher limits) provides some sense of security to the major sharers. The people sharing on those hubs are the ones the RIAA wants to get, but they'll have a harder time if they need to have 50 gigs of share to connect to the server.

Right. Where would the RIAA come up with over 50 gigs of media content? It's not like they own all the music in the world right?

Maybe.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because they got the ISP's to take down the servers, because they were hosted by the ISP's. P2P OTH isn't exactly an ISP hosted server, it's something differen't.

Are you kidding?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course they are going after websites that are distributing their music. Just exactly how many sites have you found recently that contain working links to copyrighted MP3s? RIAA's recent lawsuits have nothing to do with P2P applications in particular. They are going after people who are distributing their music. Distributing music with today's P2P music applications is not much different than creating a webpage and registering it with a search engine.

Old Fight

[mphase]

There has been outcry over sites being shutdown for mp3 serving, it's was just a small shortlived outcry that was solved by Napster. If p2p is ever succesfully shutdown they will be an instant rush back to http mp3 trading.

Simple. It's easier.

[greymond]

The Novice user does not understand how or what "an FTP" is and does NOT know how to "send/upload" files to his "website" let alone create a page to link them.

As far as the person getting them. some may not even know how to get it to "stop playing in the browser" and actually save it to the desktop using right click (option+click if 1 button)

Not to mention the fact that when you type in "Britney Spears MP3's" in google you get anything BUT Britney MP3's... let's be reasonable here.

Even the most basic user can figure out how to install a program (in windows everything is "I agree" - "Next" - "Finish" - "Done") and type in a song name and grab it or share it.

Re:Simple. It's easier.

[Anonymous Coward]

First: a big % of the people using p2p or IRC seems to beleive that they are anonymous and/or don't believe it's going to happen to them. But almost every web site owner is aware that he/she can be retraced quite easily.

2nd: I really really really don't understand why people don't use USENET (newsgroups) more often. I mean it is simple, clean, quite a good deal more anonymous that anything else (if you are using private accounts). It is fast and loaded with good stuff. I use it ALL THE TIME and couldn't be bothered to use a p2p or anything else for that matter (plus the pr0n is good ;))

Re:Simple. It's easier.

[inburito]

USENET a) isn't free b) has a crapy signal to noise ratio, except maybe if you are looking for porn.

Well.. a) actually it is. but because of b) you pretty much have to pay for it to actually get anything more complex downloaded. At the current volume it is pretty much impossible for anyone to capture the whole feed without substantial investments and that costs money. There are lots of free servers and even as close as 5-6 years ago most of them were carrying the binary groups too but it just doesn't make sense anymore.

Its easier

[Anonymous Coward]

To share files via P2P programs like Kazaa than it is to say build a webpage, upload it and maintain it.

Also Webpage sharing is also harder to do say anonymously or at least with that feeling. Given you need a credit card and least some sort of contact info it appears to many that Kazaa is safer.

and The final reason is ...... Its trendy to do it P2P style after all HTTP isnt nearly as sued as say Napster was.

OT- Does anyone know of a good Open Source Windows 32 Platform Firwall?

Err...

[DrEldarion]

The reason is pretty simple.

People uploading stuff to webservers: takes a semi-technically inclined person to do it, webspace costs money, webspace is a lot more finite than hard drive space, doesn't get much traffic, doesn't get spread "virally".

P2P: Any Joe Schmoe can do it, it gets a LOT of traffic (millions of people on P2P networks, it's free, you can share as much as your HD can hold, due to the easy searches in P2P you get more traffic, files spread "virally" - one person can rip something and the next day hundreds can have it.

-- Dr. Eldarion --

http

[BWJones]

Of course running your own server has its advantages. However, most of the folks with their own servers are not the people that use the PTP services. The folks relying on PTP are often fairly unsophisticated computer users who are looking for the latest song for free and are unknowingly relying on a infrastructure to find their songs. They don't know how it works, they just click and the song comes through for free. Hosting your own server requires a little more work which the vast majority of people are not capable of performing. (Although Apple is lowering the requirements for hosting your own Apache server significantly. One click and you are live.)

Two reasons

[Rew190]

Two reasons as to why more folks are hunting for MP3s on filesharing (and why these reasons have made it mainstream), hence RIAA's attention:

1. Easier to find files- download one app and do a search as opposed to having to hunt down different webpages for different files and all of the hassles included with that approach (dead links, 401s, etc).

2. More files available on filesharing (generally speaking).

Not the same attck at all.

[BrynM]

"Why is there no outraged defense of http filesharing?"

As for why there hasn't been as much defense of HTTP filesharing, HTTP itself isn't under attack. The RIAA has been steadfast in trying to kill P2P networks altogether and haven't gone after Apache, Netscape or MS because there are big players involved with the server architecture who have extensive legal and market battles under their belts (MS especially). Napster was an easy target (small and inexperienced) and a great example to publicize the fight against piracy since it was starting to get media attention, much as the web itself did just a short couple of years before. This is in fact one of the arguments against the RIAA's actions mentioned over and over by P2P defenders.

I'm kind of amazed that the article's author missed this if he did any background research at all.

Cat and mouse

[lurker412]

The protocol is beside the point. The evolution of file sharing has been largely a game of cat and mouse since its inception. The cat has not changed, but the mice have adapted and will likely continue to do so. If the cat suddenly gave up on mice and chased birds instead, HTTP would not be the technology of choice for file sharing, at least not for free. P2P with a central directory service is more efficient.

Re:Riaa doesn;t need to shut down webservers...

[jeffkjo1]

It's fairly easy to put a robots.txt file in your top level server tree to tell google to mind its own business. You could also password protect stuff.

short answers:

[PhoenixOne]

1) people filesharing via webservers are easy to stop (I've shut down at least a dozen sites of people stupid enough to share my software without my permission).
2) filesharing via webservers is slower (limited bandwidth).
3) filesharing via webservers is easy to spot. Either they make the site public and you can find it easy or they don't tell anybody and it doesn't really matter (if nobody knows where to download the files who cares?).
4) setting up a webserver takes some effort

P2P allows any idiot to share anything on their hard-drive. They can look at all the files all the other idiots are sharing. Bandwidth can be shared. Once a file is shared it is almost imposible to stop (you can bust 100 idiots but 100,000 more are still sharing the file).

To Defeat the Undefeatable Foe

[DannyO152]

The first thing I'd suggest is that the RIAA and its members are not concerned with selling more units per se, they want to sell more units of their hit recordings. These recordings have paid back their costs and each new unit, minus its notably small manufacturing costs, is pure profit.

As for the speculation about why the sturm and drang over p2p and not so much noise about http, I would note that, as LawMeme states, http sites are easier to take down. And so, let me propose that the point is to go after the unsolvable problem, p2p. After all, they can claim "we killed Napster, we subponeaed isp's, we even sued the 12 year olds and millions are still 'stealing' from us -- we cannot kill the beast. So, Congress, let's just tax hard drives, blank cd's, isp accounts, etc., and let the government, as proxy for the thieves, reimburse us for our losses." Because revenues from taxes are really pure profit. And would they split the reimbursements with their artists? Well, of course, I can't imagine why I would even ask the question!

Please note, the above analysis in no way endorses the RIAA viewpoint that the primary cause of their troubles is from filesharing. In fact, didn't we see that filesharing has decreased and, looking at their album sales, they are still selling fewer units.