THE INTERNET: A GRAB BAG OF FILES

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If something can be copied, it probably already has been, and it’s just a matter of knowing where to look for it on the Internet. Although most people think of the Internet as nothing more than pretty websites and email, it’s really a network that connects computers.

The Internet has revolutionized the way people share files. In the old days, sharing files meant physically handing a copy of a floppy disk to another person, but with the Internet, sharing files can be as simple as pressing a button.

With people able to share files so easily, sharing files no longer requires technical knowledge as much as it requires motivation. Some people share files because they like the idea of “getting back” at big corporations by not paying for the copyrighted files that they duplicate and distribute to others. Others share because they just want a copy of a particular song or program, and they don’t want or can’t afford to pay for it. Still a few people share files in blissful ignorance of the fact that duplicating copyrighted files is actually illegal.

So over the past decade, people have found various ways to share files, always staying just one step ahead of the law. Here’s a look at some of the more popular methods of file sharing.

BBS

Before the Internet, people used to share files through electronic bulletin board systems, otherwise known as BBSs. Basically, a BBS was nothing more than a computer hooked up to one or more phone lines that allowed anyone from around the world to call in. Once you called into a BBS, you could download files to your computer or upload files from your computer to the BBS for other people to copy.

While BBSs were once popular, their technical limitations prevented widespread file sharing. First, each caller had to pay their own phone charges to connect to a BBS, which meant that most BBS users tended to live in the city where the BBS was located, although some of the larger and more popular BBSs attracted the occasional long distance or overseas user.

Since the only way to connect to a BBS was through a telephone line, people found sharing files through a BBS inconvenient because telephone lines are notoriously slow for transferring huge files. Although people could still share files through a BBS, the files spread slowly and could take days, months, or even years just to reach someone else in another part of the country.

The Internet pretty much wiped out BBSs as a popular way to share files, but some people still maintain BBSs in areas where Internet access is still sporadic (such as Third World countries) or because a BBS can offer more privacy and anonymity than a website. To find a BBS in your area, enter BBS in your favorite search engine or browse through the USBBS site (http://www.usbbs.org) to view a listing of BBSs in the United States and Canada.

EMAIL

Email lets you send a message to a particular address on the Internet. As long as you type the recipient’s email address correctly, your message will likely take no more than a few hours (if not minutes) to reach its destination.

Of course, you don’t need to send only text in your email. Email can also include files as attachments. So if your friend wants a copy of a Madonna song, you can email that song to him as an audio file, and that’s that.

While trading files through email is easy and relatively safe from prying eyes, it does limit you to trading files with people whose email addresses you already know. If you want a copy of an Eminem song but none of your friends have it, you’re out of luck. So while email offers near-certain delivery, the variety of files you can get is limited by the number of friends you have and their tastes in files. For technical reasons, many Internet service providers (ISPs) also limit the maximum size of files you can send by email. If too many people start sending massive files by email, they could overload the storage space on their ISP’s computers. For these reasons, file trading by email remains a common but not dominant way to share files with others.

NEWSGROUPS

Trading files by email limits your choices to specific email addresses and the limited number of files each of your email correspondents possesses. To avoid this problem, many people trade files through newsgroups, which act like the electronic equivalent of a massive bulletin board. Instead of sending a message to a specific person, you send your message to a newsgroup for anyone to view.

Each newsgroup focuses on a specific topic, such as computer programming,-skydiving, or rap music. Visitors can quickly find a topic that interests them, and then read and write messages from and to other people interested in the same topic. Anyone can read a message posted in a newsgroup, which means you can meet and communicate with people all over the world.

This turns out to be great for file trading, too, because you’re no longer limited to trading files with a small circle of friends. Now you can trade files with people you don’t know and who you may never meet. (In fact, you may never want to meet many of the people who hang out in newsgroups.)

For example, in many music-related newsgroups, people leave messages asking for a particular song. If the timing is right, someone with that particular song may read that message and either send that file by email or, more likely, post it in the newsgroup for anyone to copy.

Still, newsgroups are fairly unreliable for file trading. Merely asking for a song won’t guarantee that anyone will ever give it to you. And after you request a song, it may take hours, days, weeks, or even longer before the song actually appears in the newsgroup—if it appears at all. Of course, if you wait long enough in the right newsgroup, you’ll probably find what you’re after. But that limits newsgroup file sharing to people with a lot of patience, a trait not usually found among file traders. Generally, file sharing within newsgroups consists more of browsing and taking what you find rather than searching for a particular file. Newsgroups may well be the best resource for browsing the different genres of music and finding new music to audition. Many music lovers browse through newsgroups to sample different songs and styles that they might never have listened to before.

DOWNLOADING FROM WEBSITES

If someone has files that you want, you may never know, unless you ask them by email or find it through a newsgroup. But what if you don’t want to ask or you don’t want people to ask you? You can find your files at a website or post them to a website for others to download.

If you create a website, you can post all the files that you own, allowing-anyone to browse through your collection and copy the files they want. Of course, few people freely give away their collection of files without expecting something in return, so many such sites will only let you download a file if you first give them some files in return. Like newsgroups, these file downloading sites can be convenient because you simply browse through their file collection and download the ones you want.

The main drawback with file trading through an FTP or website is that it’s easy for the recording industry (such as the RIAA in the United States) or the government to find out who’s running a specific site and come after you. Offering copyrighted files through a website can blatantly advertise your law-breaking activities in much the same way as selling illegal drugs from your front porch in full view of the neighbors. Someone is going to turn you in.

Although they were rampant during the Internet’s early years, websites created for file sharing don’t last long today. Some amateurs still run them, often on free, anonymous web hosting services like Yahoo! GeoCities, but they're usually shut down within a few weeks or days. Some even host their sites on computers located in Third World countries to avoid breaking the laws of American or European countries.

DOWNLOADING FROM FTP SITES

Before websites appeared, many people transferred files through FTP (File Transfer Protocol) sites, which contained files stored in different directories. To have full access to an FTP site, you need to use a special FTP program. (Many web browsers allow you to read and download from FTP sites, but not save files to the sites.) The FTP program runs on your computer and lets you navigate through the directories and files stored on another computer so you can download the files you want, as shown in Figure 1-1.

Figure 1-1: An FTP program lets you browse another computer’s drives and folders for the files you want.

Like websites, it’s risky to run a file trading FTP site because it’s simple to track down the computer hosting the site. As a result, many such FTP sites won’t allow people to download files until they first upload some.

By forcing people to upload files, these FTP sites ensure that governmentor industry officials can’t access their sites since doing so would mean they would have to violate the very copyright infringement laws they’re trying to enforce. And if these officials can’t actually download a copyrighted file from an FTP site, they can’t prove that the site is actually trading copyrighted files rather than just legitimate files that “happen” to use the names of copyrighted files, such as popular songs.

Still, despite the risk of running an FTP site, FTP downloading is still heavily-used in conjunction with IRC, with IRC file-sharing channels posting the login information required to access these FTP sites.

INSTANT FILE TRANSFER: IRC

When you ask for a file by email, it can be frustrating to wait for an answer. So for instant communication, many people are turning to Internet Relay Chat (IRC) to swap files. IRC acts like a real-time version of newsgroups, except that whatever you type appears instantly on the computer screens of other people around the world. Like the instant messaging services you may be used to (like AIM and Yahoo! IM), IRC is a way to chat online.

Like newsgroups, IRC organizes people into channels based on specific topics, such as classical music or computer graphics. Once you join a channel based on a specific topic, such as jazz, you can ask someone for a particular file or just browse through the files someone offers and start downloading right away.

As with newsgroups, IRC is a holdover from the Internet’s early days. It’s awkward and cumbersome compared with newer file sharing methods. Users can’t simply load a program and begin grabbing files. Instead, they must learn new navigation methods, moving to the right channel at the right time. Sometimes users must type complex commands to locate and download the files they want. Figure 1-2 shows a typical IRC chat room filled with messages from different users.

Figure 1-2: Sharing files through IRC requires a file server bot, which advertises which files it offers such as the Crusader Kings video game or the Chasing Liberty or Never Die Alone movies.

Unlike newsgroups messages that someone can read a day or two later, IRC messages disappear fairly quickly. As a result, many people use IRC channels to post access instructions for visiting web or FTP file trading sites or to plant special programs, called file server bots, that allow others to download files from another computer.

IRC channels are often places where file traders meet, offer their file collections for downloading, and then start swapping files. Many IRC users are technically savvy people who don’t mind typing arcane commands to chat or swap files. For most people, instant messaging services are much more popular, because they offer simpler point-and-click methods for finding and downloading files.

INSTANT FILE TRANSFER: INSTANT MESSAGING

Instant messaging services have adopted the real-time communication of IRC and slapped a pretty graphical user interface over it. So instead of typing cryptic commands to chat, as you would with IRC, instant messaging lets you chat by typing messages and clicking buttons to send or receive files.

Like IRC, instant messaging services divide users into chat rooms, with each chat room focusing on a specific topic. Users can also set up temporary private chat rooms to lock out strangers and invite only their friends in. While some chat rooms focus exclusively on chatting, others include some file sharing.

Despite the larger number of people using instant messaging (as compared-with IRC), there’s still no guarantee that you’ll find a particular file within a chat room. Some people won’t have the file you want, others won’t want to take the time to trade files with a stranger, and still others may have the file you want but may not have seen your request. While file trading within instant messaging can be done, it happens more often between friends than between complete strangers.

FILE SHARING NETWORKS—WHERE THE REAL FILE SWAPPING HAPPENS

File sharing networks have soared in popularity because they make it really easy to find tons of files and download multiple files at one time. File sharing networks, like FastTrack, eDonkey, and Gnutella, are easy, fast, and convenient, making them a natural choice for trading.

To use a file sharing network, you have to run a special program (called a client) on your computer. When you search for a particular file, the client scans the Internet to find other computers running the same client program. Once it finds them, your client scans the directories of the other client programs and gives you a list of files matching your search and the associated usernames the people whose computers contain the files (see Figure 1-3). When you ask to copy a file, your computer simply downloads that file from another computer.

Figure 1-3: When you search for a file, your client program displays a list of files along with the usernames of the computers where the files can be found.

The size of the file sharing network constantly changes as people come and go. As a result, if you begin downloading a file from someone who then disconnects from the network, you may not get the file you want.

By the same token, the more people connected to a file sharing network, the more likely someone will have the song you want, but then you have the added problem of having so many more people trying to access the same files all at once.

Because file sharing networks are so easy to use, they’re today’s most common method for trading files. They are also the authorities’ primary target, attracting lawsuits from recording industry and government authorities intent on shutting down the illegal flow of copyrighted materials.

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