The future of p2p file sharing
p2pnet.net Opinion:- Janko Roettgers is a German journalist living in Los Angeles.
His book “Mix Burn & R.I.P. – Das Ende der Musikindustrie (The End of the Music Industry) – was published in Germany last fall.
With the music industry suing users worldwide two main concepts emerged as possible solutions: the concept of anonymity and the concept of darknets, he says …
Now read on >>>>>>>>>>
Social networks: The future of P2P file sharing
By Janko Roettgers - FREEbitflows
Since the recording industry sued Napster in December 1999, the P2P community has tried to evade persecution by making their systems more autonomous and less traceable. Unfortunately this process has also adversely affected the user experience. This may not be so obvious when we look at P2P just from a technological perspective. Today’s networks serve many more users than the first generation of file sharing platforms. They also enable us to move bits around the network much faster than before.
But second and third generation networks and services like Fasttrack / Kazaa, Gnutella and Bittorrent lack one thing that Napster had: Community. Napster enabled users to engage in discussions and discover new content simply by browsing the shared folders of random people who happened to attend the same chat room. This sort of accidental collaborative filtering is very unlikely in modern networks.
With the music industry suing users worldwide two main concepts emerged as possible solutions: the concept of anonymity and the concept of darknets. Anonymous file sharing is not a new idea, but with increasing legal pressure more and more users demand technical solutions that allow tham to share content without concealing their identity. Unfortunately in most cases anonymity goes along with a loss of community. If I don’t know who is downloading a file from my hard disk I won’t have a chance to engage in a discussion about that file.
On the other hand, darknets are small networks that are based on trust rather than on anonymity. The idea of such webs of trust isn’t really a new idea either, but it recently received lots of attention when a group of Microsoft researchers envisioned it as a possible future of P2P. The problem with trusted communities is that they face a dilemma of differenciation. If their users trust too many people they could face intrusion. If they are too paranoid they’ll suffer from a lack of new content. However this is only true if we define such a group or network as a closed system. I don’t think this is necessarily true for today’s darknets – people exchanging content with their pals over Instant Messaging or in real life – and it doesn’t need to be true for technical more innovative darknets that might eventually be able to replace today’s P2P networks.
An interesting model for these future darknets emerged when the social networking site Friendster.com started in spring of 2003. Friendster connects people based on their immediate relations and allows to build quite impressive personal networks. Originally the website connected people up to the fourth degree. Average users could easly be connected to more than half a million fourth-degree friendsters. To sustain a feeling of intimacy Friendster recently reduced the personal network horizon to three degrees. Even with these limitations it is very well possible to build a personal network of tens of thousands of people.
Friendster made the idea of social networking popular, but it is by far not the only platform offering such services. Other websites have introduced significant additions. Tribe.net for example allows to form topic-related networking groups. Orkut offers it’s users the chance to distinguish between a general, a professional and a personal profile, offering individual access for many bits of information. The decisions made when completing such a Orkut profile are based on calculated risks. How much can I gain from making such information accessible to other people, and how high are the risks? If I publish my e-mail-address publicly I might risk getting even more spam. Not publishing it at all might make it hard for people that are important to me to get in contact with me.
Such decisions based on calculated risks could also help us to create very effective social P2P networks. Instead of relying on the trust of a closed community, each participant could determine on a case by case basis how much he wants to risk. I might want to share my whole digital music collection with only a handful of close personal friends. However I might be willing to take the risk to share a few hundred files with everyone in my extended personal network. Introducing different layers of groups and relationships might even expand each participant’s network horizon.
Unlike closed groups, a social P2P network can not be compromised that easily because each user has different trust settings and in fact, a different network. And finally social networks will almost automatically introduce a whole bunch of collaborative filtering mechanisms. Napster made it possible to accidentally discover new content by connecting with strangers. Social networks automatically connect you to people with similiar interests, making it much easier to find what you want without even knowing what to search for.
May 15th, 2004 at 12:35 am
There will always be a place for darknets, but the future of P2P is anonymous networks and clients.
Programs like Soulseek, Direct Connect and Waste offer file sharers a community geared file sharing network. However, aside from waste, these community based networks do not protect you from greedy corporations like the RIAA and MPAA. On the other hand, anonymous networks like Freenet and MUTE do protect you from them.
Infiltrating a darknet won’t be difficult for the RIAA. Proving to the court that they have the right IP number of someone on Freenet or MUTE will be extremely difficult to do.
May 15th, 2004 at 1:35 pm
The question is, how long and how much money and people is the RIAA willing to commit to the prosecution of traders? For every one the prosecute, thousands more come on-line every day, private FTP servers increase (already there are millions world-wide). They will eventually give up.
May 15th, 2004 at 8:42 pm
Nice article. Unbeknownst to most users, however, a very capable darknet is already at their fingertips: AIM. Naturally, you trust everyone on your buddy list, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. Here’s how you do it: Open AIM -> Preferences -> File Sharing. After selecting your shared folder, check the box to allow ONLY users on your Buddy list to download. Click Apply and OK and you’re done. I share all my music with my friends this way, and so do more than a few of my buddies. The whole thing is fast and secure: only your friends can pull files from you. Also, if you go over to a buddy’s house and want music, just pull the files from your PC via AIM using his screenname. The only caveat is that AIM can be a bit fussy sometimes. Just ensure that everyone you share with is using the latest version thereof, and you’ll be fine. Firewalls (router and software) can wreak havoc with older versions but mean nothing to the latest builds. There, I’ve told you. Now share on and have fun!!!
May 17th, 2004 at 4:45 pm
war on sharing has no bounds. these associations, alliances , corperations and their government infuence makes a profit of criminalizing sharing culture. one need only study the history of the prison industrial complex and military inustrial complex to get a good idea how all this in the end profits those who exploit and are greedy using property ownership systems to do so.
May 17th, 2004 at 4:48 pm
screw that. i’d rather use WASTE any day is spites AOL and there ‘copyrights’ and its not monitorable by them as far as who & what about the communication
not to mention its the first ‘real’ darknet(s) of pure p2p.
not to mention filesharing is auto and so are auto accept file sends.
July 21st, 2004 at 7:43 pm
I just find out that there is a new social network promoting file sharing among friends: http://www.socialgenie.com. Members of the socialgenie community can only share files (photos, music, etc.) with his/her friends and a member can dictate which sub group of friends can see which shared files. Looks like fun.