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In the early 80s, some friends of mine formed a music buying club. They took
turns buying albums then all the other club members made tapes of the
purchases. My friends took advantage of a new technology in order to share
their acquisitions.
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In the 90s, folks started to exploit another new technology in order to acquire
music for the cost of a blank CD. The practice of "burn and return" became so
common that it killed several mail order houses.
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In the 2Ks, the new technology, file sharing or, more accurately, Peer to Peer
networking (P2P) makes it possible to acquire a considerable library of music
without leaving your chair. The controversy swirling around P2P reminds me of
parents discussing teen sex. It doesn't really matter what anyone thinks about
it. It's enough to know that there are a lot of ways of doing it, it can't be
stopped, and getting caught should be the least of anyone's worries. That said
there are still many concerns.
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One big problem with P2P is the number of peers in the pool, 30 million or so
at any given moment. File sharing might feel as comfortable as necking in the
living room with your steady on a Saturday night but it's more like playing
full contact sports in a New Orleans transvestite bar during Mardi Gras. Many
of the other players have hidden agendas.
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An astonishing number of files, 45% in one study, downloaded using the most
popular P2P application, Kazaa, contained malicious code. That's nerd-speak
for viruses, trojans, and spyware. Most "free" P2P applications come bundled
with their own spyware that, once it's on your system, is almost impossible to
get off. In spite of all that, wading through the cyber sewers to get to the
treasure
isn't the scariest part of P2P networking.
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The scariest part is distributed computing. The potential for abuse or, as its
proponents like to call it, profit from distributed computing is almost
limitless. The idea is that home users give permission to a software
distributor to use a portion of their PC's resources. The software distributor
can then sell the combined computing power of millions of PCs to anyone they
want. Computers on the P2P network could be used to send spam, host porn
sites, or sort through billions of electronic communications for marketing
keywords
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You might wonder why anyone would agree to participate in such a scheme but
tens of millions, most of them kids, already have. The permission is buried,
courtesy of Brilliant Digital Entertainment, in the End User Licence Agreement
(EULA) of Kazaa, Morpheus, and a host of other file sharing applications. You
can read an excellent article about it from CNET at
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-873181.html.
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How can you practice safe file sharing? Don't even think about it until you
have installed an anti-virus program, a firewall and a spyware killer. I use
AVG, Zone Alarm, and Ad-aware all of which offer free versions for home use.
Be warned that some advertised spyware killers are actually spies disguised as
killers. Don't subscribe to downloading services. The software distributor
doesn't actually provide any service, they're just P2P applications that expire
in a year's time. Choose the right P2P application. My steadies are LimeWire
Pro and Shareaza, but I'll dump them in a Bay Street second if they start
letting friends in the back door. One final word, you can share a lot more
than music. Any nerd will tell you, if you can save it, you can share it.
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