Blog: P2P

Peer to peer sharing is one of the best things that has come about thanks to the internet and new media. The peer to peer sharing is predicated on file sharing which is the act of sharing data or access to programs with people on a network. Peer to peer takes that to a more personal level. Rather than having an independent company collecting the data and distributing it to users, one person acts as the source or server in the network and shares it with other users. This is a decentralized approach to file sharing where a network of users saves and shares the data and is predicated entirely on popularity and the willingness of people to share.

Probably the most famous examples of peer to peer file sharing has to be torrenting. Torrenting is a file distribution system where an initial user has the digital content, whether that be music or video or text and they share it with everyone who has access to the network. The next person downloads it from the original owner and subsequently a web gets formed. If there are 10 people actively sharing a file, a new person downloading would get 10% from each person adjusted for things like latency. Another example of peer to peer file sharing is a more specific torrenting platform, Soulseek. Users on soulseek can share music with one another. The usual taboo is piracy and avoiding the cost of the media people are consuming but there are more uses. In countries where the political environment is very oppressive, a decentralized peer to peer sharing network lets people access news and media that is unfairly denied by their government. Another use is that users who are seeking old, rare and outdated files can use file sharing when the official companies stop supporting their products.

Companies have engaged into a battle back and forth with people who want to share their data and companies who want to restrict what can and cannot be distributed. In the wikipedia article there is a tool described that companies use and that is called DRM. DRM or digital rights management is a tool used by companies that restricts access to digital media to the original owner. While their actions to protect their intellectual property, the implementation is horrendous. Many times, people who try to run programs with DRM enabled have to get permission from companies and support in order to get it working properly. If the digital content is outdated with a defunct company, the information is dead without any support.