Blog Post #4

• The first term that I searched on Wikipedia was "peer-to-peer file sharing". What was interesting about the Wikipedia page with the same title were the neutrality warnings, the suggested "clean-up" of this article, and it said how the article "may not accurately summarize its content". The neutrality portion is interesting because there is so much controversy over peer to peer file sharing that a Wikipedia page, which usually tends to be completely neutral and only presents facts, has a warning that the article may not be "neutral". What I also found interesting is that the page says it has a "legal aspects" portion, but that portion of the article is only a link to another Wikipedia page entitled "legal aspects of file sharing". This article is interestingly much longer than the original page. It goes through cases and standards on P2P file sharing in several countries, including our own and it is much more thorough than any of the other countries' sections. The end of the section on US laws and litigation sites some fairly recent cases, suggesting that this issue is still current. Down at the bottom of the article in the "See Also" section there is a link to a "Timeling of file sharing". 
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• Returning to the original article, "Peer-to-peer file sharing", the section on "Economic impact" stands out because it is because of this impact that the controversy over P2P file sharing arises. Billions of dollars have been lost in the music industry especially because of P2P file sharing. Many big name artists speak out against it, but they aren't the ones who needs that money. Emerging artists that are struggling have a harsh barrier to cross to make it. In the "See Also" section of the article there is a link to an article entitled "Trade group efforts against file sharing". The article goes in depth explaining the efforts the music industry is making to prevent copyright infringement, with "Actions against Internet service providers",  "Actions against file sharing services", and "Lawsuits against individuals". Several record labels are cited as well as many cases debating copyright infringement in P2P file sharing. 
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• One aspect of P2P file sharing that is sometimes overlooked because of the heated controversy are the "Risks" of file sharing. Because of the high number of people who use these file sharing networks, individuals assume they won't be the one to catch that virus or be infected with spyware. Issues like identity theft are even a serious concern in P2P file sharing. Privacy in the often shady world of file sharing is difficult to truly achieve because of the often illegal nature of file sharing.

Second Posting - How the technology works

I used the search engine DuckDuckGo because I wasn't sure of which search engine to use, so by searching "good search engines" through google I got to an about.com page that ranked DuckDuckGo as #1. The site said it had a couple unique features, such as "zero-click", which can often summarize all of the results on the first page as one result. Other "goodies" can help make it particularly easy to find specifics, such as several specific numerical facts.

The first search term that I used was "how p2p file sharing works" . The first results that popped up was a HowStuffWorks page that was part of a series of pages about peer-to-peer file sharing. Another helpful site that I got from this search was an Ezine article that also explained how P2P file sharing worked quite simply. The next search term I used was "are there different kinds of p2p file sharing?" This search term didn't produce the many high quality results as the last one did the first search result may prove useful, as it outlines the different kinds of P2P file sharing.

As helpful as the eZine article may be, the HowStuffWorks article says what the Ezine article has and more, and there are even helpful visuals to go with the text. So the two best articles I found was the series of HowStuffWorks articles and the domain monster article. 

HSW: The article says it was done by Carmen Carmack, who is obviously a paid writer for the site. The main site, HowStuffWorks is a so called "Discovery Company"; as in the Discovery channel. The site is owned, and obviously funded by, Discovery Communications. HowStuffWorks is a site meant to explain just about everything that people seem to need to be explain, or as they put it, "... from car engines to search engines, from cell phones to stem cells, and thousands of subjects in between..." on the link above. 

DM: The article is written by Ian Ford, as it says on the bottom of the page. Domain Monster is a site where people can get their own sites, and isn't an organization of any kind but rather the author is putting out this information in the article for no particular reason.

DM: The author of the article probably paid for the right to use this page.

HSW: The page was Written on March 26, 2005. Although it was 6 years ago, much of the information is still relevant today.

DM: The article was written on July 31, 2007, so it is technically more recent then the HowStuffWorks article. But, despite that, the information on the HowStuffWorks article is much more in depth and simply contains more relevant information. 

HSW: One very useful image is this:

 

There is a lot of significant information in this series of articles:

 - It explains how P2P file sharing is different than regular downloading on the internet because you use a software program, rather than a web browser, to find computers that have what you are looking for. 

- Downloading things for traditional websites is downloading from a server, while the other computers that you download from are called peers. 

- It gives a step by step explaination of the process:

   1. You run the P2P software program and send out a request for whatever you want to download.

   2. The software then tries to locate the files on other computers that share the same P2P software. 

   3. When it finds the file you want to download on a computer's hard drive, the download begins.

- Since you are using a P2P program, other people's programs can search your computer for files as well. 

- Some people download download the files they want and immediately disconnect from the system without letting other people's software have a chance to search their computer for files, and this is calle leeching. 

- File transfer duties between computers are shared, and sometimes this transfer and search can cause bottlenecks

~~ There is much more information in this article, but much of it is specific to the torrent client BitTorrent ~~~

DM: There is also a lot of useful information in the second article

- P2P networks don't distinguish between clients and servers; each so called "node" is equal in the network is considered equal.

- P2P networks don't have to rely on a server; as data is downloaded it duplicates in several different places, so if the connection to when the file original came from went offline, it is likely that the file can be found on other nodes in the server.

- There is no central server; files are transferred directly between nodes and there is no "middle man".

- Different kinds of P2P file sharing

   Gnutella

      - Was used by Limewire

      - The network is decentralized so that no one person or organization can control the network

      - Multi-source downloading is supported in this P2P protocol

   FastTrack

      - Used by the program Kazaa

      - Uses "supernodes", which enhances scale

      - Supernodes automatically are made when a powerful computer with a good network connection connects with the FastTrack software

      - The computer becomes a temporary index server

   BitTorrent

      - The client requesting a file actually requests many small P2P requests and downloads in either a random or rarest-first fashion (downloading from the beginning is normal)

      - All parts of a file are thus equally available to clients because they are downloaded in a random order

   SoulSeek

      - Relies on a central file list held on a server

      - Mainly is used for music, and it allows you to see all the files being shared by a user, so you can download entire albums or even their entire collection at one time

 

- Both sites are somewhat outdated as far as the internet goes. The DM article is four years old, and one of the most popular P2P file sharing software, Limewire, has been shut down. Also, there is definitely a possibility that P2P file sharing has advanced and that new, significant software has been developed. For the DM article specifically, there is the issue of where the information was taken from and why exactly he wrote it. I should search for specific kinds of sites (such as .org and .gov) that will better source there work and also provide legitimate motive for writing the article.

Project Post #1 - JL

I used the the metasearch engine dogpile.com because it uses multiple search engines that are quite popular (Google, Yahoo! Search, and Bing). Using this metasearch search site is useful because many search results that say come up on Yahoo! Search may not come up on Google or Bing.

My search term was "pros for peer to peer file sharing" Interestingly enough, one of the top search results sent me to results for ask.com, which was a sponsored result for Google.

One of the better results I got in the search was a link to this site which had arguments for for and against peer to peer file sharing. Even though it is an obscure .com site, it does have useful information and arguments about what's good and bad about P2P file sharing. It has a link for almost every point that is made for that particular argument. Reference sources are clearly marked and there is a works cited at the bottom of the page. One of the knocks against this site is that it's unclear as to when this particular article was published. Sure, you can go through all the dates of laws and acts passed to get a rough estimate, but it isn't clearly stated and it is likely around 3-4 years old. There isn't any mentioning of how the site is funded and there isn't even an author credited for writing it. This site is more of an outline than an actual article, which can definitely be helpful considering how many links are sited. But this isn't what I would call "academic" at all, and I will look for a more reliable link.

Many of the results for this search are links to specific P2P file sharing sites or sites that compare and contrast different P2P systems. I don't think the metasearch is to blame, but rather that my search terms were too general and since it is a metasearch engine it finds even more unrelated links than a normal search engine.

Apparently found exclusively on Bing, this link to an academic article entitled "A Measurement Study of Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Systems" is far more impressive than the link above. While it doesn't directly relate to the search terms, it is a study done at the University of Washington about the characteristics of those who use P2P file sharing. It goes into many specifics about the bandwidths of the users, how often to users file share, how often hosts connect and disconnect, and it looks at how these and other characteristics relate. The authors are clearly posted at the begging of the study along with where there funding comes from (U of Wash.) and the purpose of the article is stated in the abstract, which is right below the title, authors, and funding. This paper is much more reliable then the link above this one because it is from a credited and well known university, rather then an unknown author with an unknown motive. Again, despite not exactly being relevant to my search terms, it is relevant to our project as it discusses the characteristics of those who file share. 

First post

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