Benefits of P2P and File Sharing
Joey Lane
Professor Holmes
English 102
12-9-10
Benefits of P2P and File Sharing File sharing started with tapes in the 1970’s and CD’s in the 1980’s but file sharing did not gain mainstream attention until Napster was invented by Shawn Fanning in 1999. Napster, the first large scale illegal file sharing program, was a peer to peer (P2P) program which allows users to trade files from one computer to another through a central program. Once Napster was released, it immediately gained widespread popularity. Napster was shut down in 2001 after the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued Napster and won on the grounds of copyright infringement (Janssens, Vandaele, and Vander Beken 77). Since Napster was shut down, there have been many programs that have arisen to take its place that do the job faster and more efficiently such as LimeWire and BitTorrent (Jones 289). This has caused a major problem in global CD sales; According to criminology doctor Richard Jones, CD sales have dropped from 2.5 billion sales in 2000 to 1.8 billion sales in 2006, this has cost the record industry billions. Although this does not sound good, this information can be taken two ways: first, P2P programs should be done away with completely because they are harming the traditional way the music industry distributes music. Another way to look at this information is that technology is changing and in order to keep up, both record labels and artists need to embrace advances in technology to make changes to create a new, more profitable music industry. Although file sharing has been attacked in the recent past, there is much solid evidence that file sharing should not be done away with completely. There are many ways that P2P can be beneficial, we should not be so quick to criticize file sharing, but instead, look at the benefits of file sharing and how it can be used to aid music distribution. MP3, short for MPEG-1 Audio Layer-3, was invented in 1987 as a way to make high
Professor Holmes
English 102
12-9-10
Benefits of P2P and File Sharing File sharing started with tapes in the 1970’s and CD’s in the 1980’s but file sharing did not gain mainstream attention until Napster was invented by Shawn Fanning in 1999. Napster, the first large scale illegal file sharing program, was a peer to peer (P2P) program which allows users to trade files from one computer to another through a central program. Once Napster was released, it immediately gained widespread popularity. Napster was shut down in 2001 after the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued Napster and won on the grounds of copyright infringement (Janssens, Vandaele, and Vander Beken 77). Since Napster was shut down, there have been many programs that have arisen to take its place that do the job faster and more efficiently such as LimeWire and BitTorrent (Jones 289). This has caused a major problem in global CD sales; According to criminology doctor Richard Jones, CD sales have dropped from 2.5 billion sales in 2000 to 1.8 billion sales in 2006, this has cost the record industry billions. Although this does not sound good, this information can be taken two ways: first, P2P programs should be done away with completely because they are harming the traditional way the music industry distributes music. Another way to look at this information is that technology is changing and in order to keep up, both record labels and artists need to embrace advances in technology to make changes to create a new, more profitable music industry. Although file sharing has been attacked in the recent past, there is much solid evidence that file sharing should not be done away with completely. There are many ways that P2P can be beneficial, we should not be so quick to criticize file sharing, but instead, look at the benefits of file sharing and how it can be used to aid music distribution. MP3, short for MPEG-1 Audio Layer-3, was invented in 1987 as a way to make high
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