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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."
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.
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
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.
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.
P2P is more popular than web-based sharing, so the RIAA can find more targets.
Esoteric reference.
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.
vampirical
We need to use P2P as the official file distribution system for Linux. I think we should replace the whole ftp web based style with a clicknrun gui style P2P system for file distribution.
Because the majority of people use P2P software, so therefore that is what the RIAA targets.
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.
Ave Molech Setting
To share files via P2P programs like Kazaa than it is to say build a webpage, upload it and maintain it.
...... Its trendy to do it P2P style after all HTTP isnt nearly as sued as say Napster was.
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
OT- Does anyone know of a good Open Source Windows 32 Platform Firwall?
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 --
"There doesn't seem to be much complaint about the RIAA shutting down people who upload MP3s to their homepage." - these people are the sharers,the copyright violators. The outcry over P2P prosecutions are related to the loss of files to leech. Grabbing the files is not the problem, making them available is.
If all the leeches were using websites to grab their music then there would be an outcry, but they don't - they use P2P so that is where the focus is.
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.)
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Because an http server with files to download is more black and white. Either offering those files is illegal or not.
With a p2p network its much more shades of gray. Some people offer the latest Britney, some offer all stuff from IUMA, but most are in between.
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).
I post my MP3s on my personal webserver in a streaming Jukebox so I can listen to my rightfully licensed music at work. but Google got ahold of my collection and returns my site with certain searches. I then ended up on a few H4x0r5 WAREZ-MP3 lists. Needless to say, within a week of this "publicity" my bandwidth was shot to hell. The RIAA doesn't need to shut down those that put MP3s on servers. Other leeches will take care of that for them.
On a side not, I still get occasional mails from people that find a google listing and ask for access to a certain song. I can deal with that.
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"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
This is such a mystery, hmmmm... let me think about this for a while....
I think I got it!
I think it might have something to do with p2p being about 500 times more widespread as a way for mainstream folks to download music.
I'm a genius I know.
I don't think many non-geeks use anything but kaaza and the like.
I think Mr. Miller at Lawmeme has it right: filesharing is more personal. A user can watch people upload the files, and enjoy the feeling that others enjoy the same music as he does; he can see what other people are searching for (primarily pr0n from my own experience); he can add, modify, delete files on the fly - in short it's a much more personal experience to share files from your PC using P2P than it is to offer them up on a website. Particularly if the website, like most, is hosted by a computer that you don't directly control. Further P2P is new. It still has that "new car smell" about it. It's also easier for the average user to install some software, fire it up, and click-and-share away. Most users are probably intimidated by HTML - even if they don't have to generate any, the idea of it will drive people away. They have the feeling that creating websites is hard, and that it's something they cannot do. They can, however, share files. Pierre
i think the "learning curve" for using apps like kazaa and naptser is much lower (and much more highly publicized) than regular downloads via http. and with more publicity comes (naturally) a larger number of users, and subsequently, a larger number of files being downloaded. the RIAA was probably able to deal with a small amount of "piracy" the same way a software company would be (since it's just the nature of the business). but once P2P gained international notoriety and everybody and their 12-year-old cousin got broadband, a cd burner, and kazaa, the number of files and instances of filesharing shot right past the "acceptable" level
well, it's nothing one behind the ear wouldn't cure
Unless you host your own webserver, initially uploading enough of your files to make your site useful to downloaders would take far too long and be far too costly in terms of bandwidth.
With a P2P application you make your entire library of files available to the network with practially no setup.
This makes HTTP sharing pretty useless to anyone who can't/won't run their own webserver (which, I imagine, covers a large proportion of current P2P users).
- The ISP
- The webhoster (customer of ISP)
- The sharer
ISPs have rights, and navigating through their rights to find some wrongs isn't worth the fight. Go for the source and if you can't snuff it, try to limit it (like using scare tactics/lawsuits)...Two fish swim into a wall, one turns to the other and says, "Dam".
I'm kind of amazed that the article's author missed this if he did any background research at all.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
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.
After all, there's really very little functional difference between P2P and HTTP - it's a negotiation between two machines to provide data to each other. P2P is really just a client/server pair per machine.
My Mac is running both Apache and Safari - what would distinguish it functionally from a P2P client?
While P2P and HTTP may be excellent ways of file sharing, for better or for worse, the RIAA _will_ stop them. Right now they have attacked legally, which is leading P2P developers to make some advancements in the way of encryption, anonymity, etc. The RIAA seems to realize, now, that there really is no way to stop technology. We have already won.
Now they are taking the overused advice of "adopt a new business model", which seems to be services such as Apple's iTunes Music Store (Soon for Windows), BuyMusic.com, Rhapsody, and soon Roxio Napster 2.0.
The new RIAA attack plan is to offer B2P services. The problem? DRM. If I buy a CD from iTMS, for example, it may be $9.99. I would buy the same CD in store for $14.99. No, I'm NOT paying five bucks for the album art, professionally burned CD, etc. I'm paying for the right to do with it what I want. There's something about having "SOMETHING" in your hands. They can't take that away from you, like they can with digital music.
P2P for me is a way of sampling music before buying the CD. This will never be replaced by a $0.99 deal, since I like to download it, and listen to the song throughout the day. At work I listen to different music than at home. At night, different music from the day. Walking music is different from sittin' or driving music. Rhapsody fails here, so does iTMS... you can only sample certain portions, while in front of your computer. It's not the same.
Why P2P is better than HTTP? It's easier. More people use it, than HTTP was used for MP3 trading. Does it matter? No, B2P will overtake them both. There IS a large number of people who ONLY want digital music, that's why they turn to P2P. These people will turn to B2P once it becomes "mainstream."
For the most part the RIAA doesn't have to do legal battles any more (though it is a nice source of income), they can attack it by offering new online services, just as EVERYONE has been saying for years. Me, I'll stick to brick and mortar, and P2P though.
The article suggest that there are many websites infringing on copyright by providing illegal music down. And the magnitude is at least comparable to P2P file sharing. The author is surprised that RIAA would tolerate such websites.
Where are those websites? I find a lot of site with MIDI clip. But I hardly come across any with illegal MP3 download. If they exist they must be in such small number or is really obscure. Seems like the author is commenting on something of false premises.
The last article talks about p2p as a private transaction vs. http as a public transaction, and uses the analogy of handing out cdr's on a street corner vs. giving a cdr to a friend. This analogy is flawed though. Most p2p transfers occur between strangers, so you're not giving a copy to someone you know. A better analogy is that p2p is more like having a person shout "who has a copy of the latest White Stripes cd" on the sidewalk, and having some stranger hand him that cdr. It's not a private transaction. Just a different search mechanism.
Vote for Pedro
The media seems to be focusing on, and the RIAA seems to be only going after those who share the mass-market crap like Britney, Eminem, etc. I for one, am more interested in Asian pop, anime, classical recordings, game soundtracks, indie stuff, (indie) Christian music, etc. that are simply unavailable for sale in the US, whether you want to pay for it or not.
The Internet provides a unique medium to distribute works such as the aforementioned categories, whose owners can't/don't want to bother marketing in the US because the demand is so small in absolute numbers. In the absence of official marketing, it allows a building of a fan following for non mass-market type works, possibly paving the way in several years for more organized marketing efforts. Witness the growth of anime from underground fansubs to small marketers in the US, to recent feature theatrical releases (eg, Spirited Away). Without the initial underground sharing, you wouldn't have the word-of-mouth hype.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I confess I'm a pirate. So are my friends.
We download, we vet the downloads. We upload songs to private FTP servers with the bandwidth we're not using when we're at work.
We have a trust based, friend based, non peer to peer, but distributed, quality controlled file sharing experience.
It's great. It doesn't get flooded with crap, it doesn't get flooded with music we don't like. Anyone with an account on the machines is known to everyone else.
Gosh it sounds just like some warez servers back when I used to have an interest in warez, or hacker BBS's when I had an interest in that.
The web? That's all a bit new fangled for us..
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
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).
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
I think this all really has more to do with the popularity of the media over which file sharing happens. This was mentioned a few days ago, but I can't find the article.
Whichever medium for file sharing (p2p, ftp, http, etc) has the most people sharing on it, will draw the most attention and user base. Likewise, the more attention a medium gets, the more people will use that medium. Snowball effect. If somehow p2p specific programs were outlawed and everyone started using http again, we would see that method grow in popularity, drawing more leechers and sharers alike.
To that end we might even see "webserver/search/media center" programs evolve to the point that they were no different than an modern day p2p clients (just acting as web servers too).
The point is, a positive feedback cycle builds one medium or protocol over another, and the RIAA is going to attack whichever target is biggest at any given moment.
Remember the MP3 search engines? Before Napster, college students and dotcommers were filesharing by putting MP3s on their webpages for download through good ol' http.
I remember back in the day, late '98 and early '99, when I was a college freshman, before Napster and it's P2P bretheren were invented. I didn't get my pirated music from HTTP websites. I got it from 2 sources. The first was a site called Scour.net, which searched in an HTTP page, but downloaded from FTP sites and Windows shares, mostly windows shares. It had a little application, the Scour dowloader or something, that helped you download stuff linked from the page. The other way I obtained illegal music was FTP sites. In fact, I ran one off of my college dorm connection, and the funny thing is back then nobody at the school really cared.
I have blog like everyone else
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.
Ultimately, you're absolutely correct. This is probably the most important issue that needs resolution. The recording industry "middle men" haven't been offering nearly enough value for the percentage of the profits they take, nor have they really shown good taste in their recent choices of who is "worthy of promotion".
Still, there will *always* be a steady flow of music swapping/copying - because most people realize that intangible items being copied never really equate with stealing tangibles.
Bottom line: You take a physical CD off the store shelf without paying for it, you deprive the store of that sale. (They had to pay to get the disc in the first place, and now they can't recoup what they spent to put it there by reselling it.) You copy a CD, the original is still unharmed and in the hands of its original owner. Nobody can prove you would really have paid the money out to buy the music you copied. No provable, direct harm is done.
As for theories about people feeling it's "more wrong" to post MP3s to the web than share via P2P, I'm not so sure that's true. If ISPs all gave you hundreds of megs. of web storage space for free, and didn't care about bandwidth used -- and -- if someone wrote a tool making it really easy to post your music to the sites without learning HTML, etc., it'd be just like the P2P network is today.
I think that this article brings up a very interesting point. I don't think that it is the technical "difficulty" of putting songs on a website that stops people from sharing songs.
There is a difference between sharing a song and downloading a song. People want to download songs. We directly benefit from being able to listen to a song. It's a selfish desire, although we can justify it in many ways (convience, cost, evilness of RIAA).
I don't think that ANYONE wants to share songs. We don't get any benefit from giving our songs to strangers, and we put ourselves at risk for lawsuits. On top of this is the effort that it takes to host a website and the cost. The only upside I can see is the possible ego boost or the chance that other people will allow you to download their songs.
So most of us feel no incentive to host mp3s on a website, and when people are prosecuted for it we feel no sympathy, after all we wouldn't have done it.
But p2p wouldn't work without people sharing songs, and so sharing your music directory is turned on by default in most p2p clients. How many Kazaa users do you think change the defaults? I'd be willing to bet that a good portion of people don't know that they are sharing their own songs, and wouldn't know how to prevent it. Other people who do know feel guilty if they download songs without sharing their own. Back in the Napster days I remember people would cut off a connection if you weren't sharing any songs.
When a p2p sharer is sued, we can sympathize, and we're afraid that it could be us next. But it's our desire to download and not our desire to share that causes our sympathy. P2P seems okay because we only see our end - we get to listen to a song that we wouldn't have bought anyway - no one gets hurt. We don't even think about the other half - that we are distributing all the songs that we paid good money for to any shmo with an internet connection.
That model already exists: mp3.com allows artists to publish their works on their site and there are a number of payment models to choose from. Another model is for an artist to sign up with a smaller label and try to get sold on Apple's Music Store. When the Windows version hits the streets next month, there will be plenty of potential buyers.
Unlike you, I was very happy to share the Anime that I found to others. I got a lot of joy seeing the GBs added to my F-servers uploaded data stats. On the main server, I had 8-12 (depended on my mood, more than anything else) open slots for uploading. Most F-servers on IRC had 1 or 2 (if you were lucky).
I only ran the F-servers at night or over the weekend (I was always the first one in the office, so I could stop them and shutdown the Windoze machines before my colleagues arrived.
My IRC nick was SXLain_Praha. Has any of you /.ers leetched from me?
By comparison, the P2P "sharing" networks are horrendously inefficient. It's embarassing how crappy the technology is.
I've been thinking about a whole new approach, where what's passed around are random bitstreams. You have to get several bitstreams from different sources and XOR them together to get content. Different combinations of different bitstreams produce different content. No single bitstream contains copyrighted content, and every bitstream can be XORed with something which will provide legitimate content. The bitstreams are passed around via netnews. But I'm not going to implement this; it's not something I'm really interested in.
The article on Lawmeme conveniently forgets the fact that the last round of lawsuits effectively stopped web based file trading.
While this is only a number of articles on a couple of incidents, there is no question that web based file trading was effectively crushed by record industry litigation just a few years ago. With P2P, people thought they were anonymous.
However, the RIAA has consistently misrepresented the "safe harbour" clause. The intent of the "safe harbour" clause was to prevent ISPs from hosting copyrighted material on the ISPs' own servers. The identity part also had to with information hosted on the ISPs' own servers, but it appears that most judges are buying the RIAA's BS.
Welcome back to the Dark Ages.
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