Friday, May 6, 2011

FOR THE LOVE OF FILE SHARING, PIRATE STYLE, THAT IS



The days of file sharing has been around for a long time, even before the internet was conceived. People used to share files on 8 inch floppies. Then came the Bulletin Board System. The BBS is limited to phone lines until the early 1990’s. Then came Usenet. Then the early days of the internet, the most popular file sharing was the (anonymous) file transfer protocol. An Anonymous FTP server is a server which lets a user to login with using anonymous name to receive file or give file on internet. The user can find the files which they want in anonymous FTP file server.


Next, from 1995 to 1997, FTP (file transfer protocol) file sharing and free Homepage file sharing become the major way to share files. By using free Homepage, you are able to upload the files to let people who want it to download the certain file. Around 1997, Hotline, or IRQ (messenger) become the major way to share files. Messenger is a communication tool on internet which allows you to have chat or electric bulletin board. And in messenger service, there is a category for file sharing.


In 1999, Napster becomes the major way to share files. Napster changed the way of sharing files than before because this service lets peers download music files and also the capacity of it is much greater than other file sharing programs before. If you download the application, you’re able to share files with the peoples who also have the application downloaded in the computer, which means that you’re able to share files with people around the whole world. Due to this merit, about 60 million people were using this in the world and 1 million Japanese were using this application. Because of there were so many Napster users, copyright on music files become a major problem in this application. From this problem, the Napster Company crashed down and the application is no longer useable.


But in 2001, another file sharing application called WinMX have been made. This WinMX lets you share music files and also other files such as pictures, movies, and computer software. The main idea of the application is mostly same as Napter but the function have been improved. Due to the boom of WinMX, there become another problem about copyright, not just music, also on pictures, movies, and computer software. On November, 2001, the first WinMX user got arrested by using the application in an illegal way.  

Then a year or so later, Napster get’s shut down, but the good thing, it brought about the way we share files today with the torrent. Emule arrives and quickly becomes the bit torrent site. A year later we have the release of IsoHunt and the PirateBay. Now we are talking file sharing piracy, I mean file sharing. Over the years though, almost all have come and gone due to legal complications with the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).

 One of the newest ways to share though is with a Mozilla Firefox Add On. It’s called MafiaaFire. MAFIAA stands for the Music and Film Industry Association of America. The MafiaaFire program was designed to help user’s get around seizure orders against websites that are accused of piracy. The program redirects it’s user’s from one website to another. Once again Big Brother has stepped in, this time in the form of ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement), who have asked Mozilla to remove it. As of this writing Mozilla has yet to comply. I’m not sure though how long this is going to last. I would encourage you to head on over to the downloads page for this add on and give it a try, it can be found either here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=+MAFIAA+Fire&cat=all&x=18&y=25  or at the MafiaaFire website here:  http://www.mafiaafire.com/  I would love to hear your comments. As always enjoy your day!




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