LEGAL FILE SHARING SPINOFFS

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The idea behind file sharing is so simple and powerful that many people have taken the file sharing model and applied it to a variety of legal uses. Once you are finished downloading music, movies, and books from legal file sharing services, you might want to study some of the other ways file sharing technology has become a useful tool for doing more than just stealing files.

LONG-DISTANCE PHONE CALLS

File sharing networks work by shuffling data from one computer to the next until it finally arrives at its intended destination. Theoretically, you can send any type of data over a file sharing network, including pictures, movies, music, and even telephone calls.

That’s the idea behind Skype (http://www.skype.com), created by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstr m, who also created the popular Kazaa file sharing network. By downloading the free Skype software and using an ordinary headset and microphone, or the $54.99 Skype CyberPhone that plugs into your computer’s USB port, you can make free long-distance phone calls anywhere around the world.

Skype claims that the audio quality of their phone calls rivals that of traditionalland-based telephone lines. Even better, Skype encrypts every phone call, which means government authorities are going to have a hard time wiretapping anyone using Skype to make their phone calls.

Perhaps the biggest drawback to this system is that you can only make calls to other Skype users, not to any ordinary cell or landline telephone. Still, the idea of sharing computing power to transfer phone calls from one side of the planet to another for free makes Skype one of the more unusual applications for legal file sharing technology.

SHARING BUSINESS FILES

In the business world, people often need to share files with each other. While attaching files and sending them by email can be convenient, it doesn’t always work when sending massive files, such as those created by desktop publishing or photo editing programs. While some technically savvy businesses simply post their files on FTP sites and allow their workers to download the files they need using an FTP client program, many businesses don’t want to train their workers to use FTP at all.

As a compromise, several companies now offer software that allows you to create your own private file sharing networks. Such file sharing networks typically encrypt data to keep strangers from prying into your network, allowing complete privacy when chatting or sending files.

Two popular file sharing programs are Groove Virtual Office (http://www.groove.net), created by Ray Ozzie (the man who created the group collaboration program, Lotus Notes), and FolderShare (http://www.foldershare.com). Both Groove Networks and FolderShare let people designate which folders to share on the private file sharing network, and then any authorized users can freely tap into shared files on someone else’s computer and copy the files they want.

Creo (http://www.creo.com) offers an interesting twist on the business advantages of file sharing. Instead of sharing specific folders on your computer with other people in your private file sharing network, Creo Tokens lets you send special files, called tokens, in an email to someone else. When someone receives a token, they can click on it to retrieve the specific file designated by that token. By sharing files in this manner, Creo Tokens lets each person decide who can retrieve which files off their computer, providing an even tighter layer of privacy and security for everyone involved.

SHARING PHOTOGRAPHS

Many people are now capturing pictures with digital cameras, and they naturally want to share their pictures with others. Sending out individual pictures by email can be clumsy, though, and posting pictures for others to view on a website can be time consuming and very public. To make picture sharing simple and easy, many companies are now offering file sharing networks for digital photographs.

Instead of sending out pictures individually, file sharing lets you designate which folders you want to share and then you can let anyone you want browse and download your digital photograph collection at any time (as long as your computer is hooked up to the Internet at the time). Here are some popular file sharing services for sharing photographs:

Electric Shoebox http://photos.constanttime.com

OurPictures http://www.ourpictures.com

ShareALot http://www.sharealot.com

Just be aware that these digital photograph file sharing services may restrict the types of images you can share. The end-user license agreement for OurPictures specifically bans “content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, harassing, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, vulgar, invasive of another’s privacy or right of publicity, infringing of a third party’s intellectual property rights . . . hateful, racially, ethnically, or otherwise objectionable, encouraging of conduct that could constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability, or otherwise violate any applicable local, state, national or international law.” In other words, you can’t share anything that might get the file sharing services in trouble.

With so many different applications for file sharing, it’s only a matter of time before practically everyone will use file sharing for some purpose or other, whether they know it or not. The key to using legal file sharing is accepting whatever slippery definition of “legal” your government imposes on you at the time.

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