Peer to Peer Networks - Essay Example

Peer to Peer Networks Peer to Peer networks also known as P2P networks are not a recent phenomenon but the spread of their use and the amount of information which is shared between individuals on these networks is certainly a cause for concern for many MIS managers (Alavi and Leidner, 2001). While P2P networks can be used by a company to its advantage in many situations, there are far more chances of an individual within the company, using the services provided to him/her on the network, to engage in activities using P2P which could land the company in trouble. Therefore, an awareness of P2P networks and their related issues with regard to MIS becomes important for all concerned parties. The benefits for P2P networking are enormous indeed. For example, programs such as SETI@Home and Entropia use CPU cycles from millions of computers around the world to process huge amounts of data. This has led them to achieve similar processing power as some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. Additionally, users of P2P can also share other computer resources such as storage as file sharing allows the users of Gnutella to access files which are stored on hundreds of thousands of computer systems around the world (Ripeanu and Foster , 2002). In terms of relations to MIS, users of a network in an organization may certainly be attracted to the advantages of using P2P networks for their personal use, but it must be noted that they would be using company resources for accessing files or gaining points on projects such as SETI@Home. Even home users will find the availability of high-speed internet connections and more than one computer at home as an advantage when it comes to becoming a part of the P2P environment. P2P goes far beyond distributed systems since the availability of information and the sources for files are spread across the globe rather than one network alone (Alavi and Leidner, 2001). In contrast with distributed systems, P2P networks aggregate large numbers of computers which may be on the network for a short period of time and may not have permanent IPs on the network. In contrast to closed networks that MIS managers often experience, pure P2P networks let individual computers communicate directly with each other to share information and other resources without using servers which are dedicated for that purpose. The routing mechanisms are difficult to control and may even give complete anonymity to the user of the network (Ripeanu and Foster , 2002). For MIS managers, this could point to difficulties in recognizing which terminal in a given network is using the P2P network. However, they may be able to detect file sharing activities by viewing the list of programs a particular computer is running. While a well managed information system can have properties and security policies such as logs, permissions and user identification such properties are difficult to establish in a P2P network which is more or less decentralized. Such properties become dependent on individual decisions made by the users of the P2P system which leads researchers such as Ripeanu and Foster (2002) to say that, “We are dealing with a self-organized network of independent entities (Ripeanu and Foster, 2002, Pg. 2)”. These independent entities may engage in acts which are legally in a grey area if not altogether illegal. The online piracy of copyrighted music is something that has been taking place with the assistance and blessing of P2P networks for years. While independent producers and some artists may choose to freely share some of their creations with the public, there are a large number of artists and music labels who are losing out profits because of P2P networks. Therefore, it is in their best interest if their copy protected material is not distributed for sharing with everyone else in the world. While music is taken as art and entertainment by the majority of the people in the world, it is also a very serious business for some with high costs associated with the production, marketing, distribution and development of music. These costs can end up running into the billions of dollars for some studios since there are profits to be had when certain music ventures are successful. These profits also come from music concerts, music videos, the sales of CDs, online distribution of legal mp3s and several other ways of accessing music including the use of cell phones (Daley, 1999). While other industries like the automobile manufacturing sector have embraced technology by integrating it into their product to ensure a higher level of competition, the music industry got the worst possible shock and a rude awakening to the digital age through illegal downloads which has forced music studios to a rushed transition (Bruno, 2006). For the music industry, the gains they get out of selling ringtones and some mp3 files to cell phones users are more than offset by the losses they have through P2P networks. The industry as a whole has been at odds with the open and accessible nature of music distribution over P2P file sharing tools (Hammond, 2006). Strangely enough, the problem was observed early on but completely ignored by the music industry since the internet was never seriously considered to be useful medium for the distribution of digital content (Bruno, 2006). However, the situation changed at once when millions of people began using Napster to get whatever music they wanted. The battle between Napster, Metallica and the RIAA is confined to history since it concluded with a victory for the RIAA but that never stopped other networks from coming up and it seems to be a never ending problem for the industry (Knopper, 2005). As they try to stop P2P networks, the battle is waged on both technological and legal fronts. The technological front is often more difficult for those who wish to protect their content but the legal battles have resulted in some victories for organizations such as the RIAA. However, the overall war to stop music piracy has been more or less lost since no sooner than a method of protecting content is created, it is broken by those who seek to skirt the issue. According to Oakes and Alexander (2007), legal victories such as shutting down the old version of Napster or brining a halt to the Kazaa network gives the copyright owners short gains but these steps can not do much to stop the total flow of millions of songs and other digital media going from one pirate to the other. One of the latest such battles was won in court where a lady has been asked by the judge to pay monetary damages totaling more than two hundred thousand dollars for sharing 24 illegally downloaded songs on her hard drive. Organizations such as the RIAA may consider this to be a victory and a legal precedent for online pirates, but for the rest of the world this judgment is nothing scary. An industry analyst has reportedly said that “The war against illegal downloading has long been lost because 85 percent of all downloaded digital music is still illegal copies (Oakes and Alexander, 2007, Pg. 1)”. The owners of digital content may sue and target individuals who are sharing their files but the chances of a pirate getting caught are far less than their chances of winning the state lottery. With the advent of piracy on such a large scale, the sales of CDs and cassettes have declined sharply to the extent that there is growing concern that the CD could be replaced altogether with other mediums. However, it is also true that the sales of legally downloaded music provided by companies such as Apple Inc. or Real Inc. have grown to be legitimate sources of distributed music. Companies such as those who have sell thousands of copies of the same song on a daily basis could save a lot of money by using P2P networks that have some kind of authentication system built into them. At the same time, it must be noted that 95% of the content shared on P2P networks remains illegal since legally downloaded music has a market share of less than 5%. Such a high level of piracy is undoubtedly hurting the industry and there have been moves to make sure that individuals buy their music or movies instead of stealing them. However, such steps often irk users since those who have legally purchased content may find it impossible to use it on different devices while those who steal content can play it on everything they own. In the legal world, even if the RIAA could start litigating against each and every downloader in the world, it could not curb file sharing globally where American law may not have jurisdiction and international copy protection laws are lax or difficult to enforce (Oakes and Alexander, 2007). In such a scenario, it is not difficult to see that the solution for the problems faced by MIS managers and the industry in general have to come from the technical side of things. While it is important to educate and train employees with regard to P2P networks and the legal liability a company can be placed under, it is equally important to use technology which prevents or hinders their use in the first place. Thus on a company network at least, technical solutions can effectively prevent individuals from engaging in piracy. On the industry level, the management of digital copyrights and ensuring the fair use of legally purchased material is is very important if a technical approach to managing piracy is to be used. However, such approaches may be intrusive for the users and previous attempts to manage piracy have actually led to customers being put off from using certain devices or certain technologies. By making it difficult for customers to use products with things such as activation or rights management controls, studios or manufacturers of devices could lose more people to piracy without content rights management. As reported by Enderle (2007), such a situation was recently created with the over zealous protection of blu-ray content which left some legal customers unable to play the films that they had bought. To conclude, I feel that piracy and the theft of digital content is always going to be there as much if not more than what it was in the past. Developers may keep producing methods to lock out thieves but it seems that those who seek to steal music remain more able then those who seek to protect it. A very recent example of that is the way the iPhone was launched as a locked device, then unlocked, then locked again and unlocked once more. P2P networks are only a part of that battle for control between industries and individuals which means that piracy may be reduced or even contained to a level but it might never be stopped altogether. Word Count: 1,946 Works Cited Alavi, M, and Leidner, D. 2001, ‘Knowledge management and knowledge management systems’, MIS Quarterly, 25(1): 107-36. Bruno, A. 2006. ‘Analog Hole’ Bill A Digital Chasm. Billboard 118(2): 22-24. Daley, D. 1999. Recording Studios and AES. Billboard 111(39): 60-62. Enderle, P. 2007, ‘On Piracy: It Is Time to Stop Making Customers Criminals’, [Online] Available at: http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/rob/?p=156 Hammond, L. 2006. On His Own Terms. Electronic Musician 22(2): 67-76 Knopper, S. 2005. The music industry has targeted 11,456 illegal downloaders -- has it done any good? Rolling Stone Magazine. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7380412/riaa_will_keep_on_suing/ Oakes, L. and Alexander, S. 2007, ‘Music piracy thrives despite legal victory’, [Online] Available at: http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/stories/2007/10/06/music_downloads.html Ripeanu, M. and Foster, I. Mapping Gnutella Network, International Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Systems [Online] Available at: http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~matei/PAPERS/ic.pdf Read More