Software exploits iTunes' sharing capability
With the release of the iTunes Music Store in April 2003, things were looking up for the music industry. People could now conveniently download music onto their computers' hard drives, without having to break the law.
Instead of being obtained via illegal downloading, iTMS offered music at 99 cents a song, or approximately $10 per album. Users could begin buying songs immediately after downloading the free software and creating a store account.
Another innovative feature of the program was the "sharing" capability--which allows people on the same network to "stream" music, or listen to each other's songs without permanently downloading them.
Unfortunately for the music industry, just 10 days after the release of the anticipated iTMS, a new program became available that exploited the file-sharing capabilities of iTunes. The software, appropriately called myTunes, enabled people to download shared songs to their hard drives -- a function never intended by the creators of iTunes.
While Apple responded with an updated version of iTunes that disabled the function of myTunes, new applications such as myTunes Redux and ourTunes immediately took its place.
These third-party applications differ from more common downloading programs because users can only download songs from users on the same computer network -- like one in a dormitory. However, with Kazaa, people can download songs from unknown users across the Internet.
Users of these programs are rarely plagued by the problems that face many Kazaa enthusiasts: slow downloads, fake files and fear of reprisal from the record industry.
Because downloading occurs on a single network, songs can be downloaded in merely a few seconds.
Consequently, ourTunes is primarily a college phenomenon, as it is most effective for students living in dormitories and who have fast Internet connections.
"I use ourTunes because it's the easiest way to get all the music I want," said Kristin, a College freshman who chose to remain anonymous. As a resident of King's Court, she has access to the music of every other iTunes user in the building who has enabled file sharing.
She added that with ourTunes, there is less risk of getting viruses compared to that of other peer-to-peer programs such as Limewire. These programs often come with adware -- creating unwanted pop-up ads once the software is installed -- which grows exponentially as the user continues to download songs.
The intra-network sharing program is "free, fast music," Engineering freshman Bruce Hilman said. He also noted that people who use ourTunes -- as opposed to those using other programs -- are less likely to draw attention from the Recording Industry Association of America because all of the downloading occurs on the same network.
According to Penn Information Security Officer David Millar, over 1,500 lawsuits have been filed against students, with a typical settlement amounting to few thousand dollars. These fines are minimal, however, when compared with the millions of dollars that the RIAA estimates it loses each day due to illegal downloading.
"I feel like I can't really get caught," Hilman said.
Despite being dependable and user-friendly, these free, third-party programs do have their drawbacks. Hilman estimates there are usually 30 to 40 people sharing music at any given moment on his network in the Quad. While this may amount to thousands of tracks, users of the iTunes Music Store have more than one million songs at their disposal. Programs like Kazaa offer access to almost an unlimited number of songs and other media.
So for a person living in an off-campus house, ourTunes probably is not the best way to get free music.
"It was a hassle-free way to download mp3s" College sophomore and former ourTunes user Amanda Jasso said. However, Jasso added that she chose to stop using the program because she "literally ran out of songs to download" and "many people have really bad taste in music."
Another weakness of ourTunes and myTunes is that a person can only search for songs that are already iTunes-compatible files, which excludes the widely used Windows Media format.
"I don't like how iTunes doesn't play Windows Media files. It's annoying to have to convert them to a iTunes-compatible format," Engineering sophomore Sam Wang said. He prefers to listen to music on a streaming audio site called Rhapsody, and then occasionally purchase a song if he really likes it.
With the increasing availability of legal music-downloading services, the future of ourTunes may be in jeopardy. According to Wharton Marketing professor Peter Fader, digital music sites will soon begin to reduce the amount of illegal downloading.
For now, though, free downloading provided by programs like ourTunes remains as popular as ever.
BitTorrent distribution model flourishes
Downloading movies used to be a lot harder. But thanks to file-sharing program BitTorrent, a large file can be downloaded in just minutes.
BitTorrent is the preferred method of downloading these days -- particularly among college students. It has become so popular that more than one third of all Internet traffic is made up of BitTorrent file transfers, according to network-monitoring company CacheLogic.
BitTorrent is a program that acts as a tracker for all of its users, directing them to the files they want to download via certain Web sites. Users cite its speed and efficiency for downloading large files as the primary reason for its popularity.
As a result, BitTorrent is generally used to download movies and television shows, as opposed to songs.
The peer-to-peer file sharing program is so fast because it allows for the file to be downloaded by one user while simultaneously being uploaded by another.
"It's the fastest way for me to download movies and TV shows," Nursing sophomore Emily Pak said. She added that she likes to download some of the shows that she might have missed during the week, such as The OC or Alias. Instead of having to go out and buy the whole season on DVD, Pak chooses to download the ones she didn't see and then watch them from her computer at her own convenience.
"Most of the stuff I download is mainstream, but I also like to download Chinese movies and songs because it's really hard to find them for sale here," Wharton and Engineering freshman Rui Guo said.
For students like Pak and Guo, downloading isn't just about getting movies without for free. Currently, there are few services that allow users to purchase movies digitally and none to download television shows. Users say BitTorrent is simply meeting a demand that the movie industry has yet to acknowledge in a manner other than lawsuits.
As opposed to traditional search-based programs, users look to Web sites to find their desired files with BitTorrent. The Web sites, however, contain no actual multimedia. Instead, they depend on individuals to upload "torrents" -- links to the actual files, which reside on personal computers across cyberspace. The Web site then posts these torrents, linking users to desired files.
Another reason for BitTorrent's immense popularity is the superior integrity of its files in comparison to other peer-to-peer programs. Users know exactly what they're getting because many of the files are hand-checked by the moderating Web sites.
This is far from being the case with other programs such as Kazaa, where an estimated 70 percent of the files are either damaged or fake.
However, in an effort to curtail the use of BitTorrent by the Motion Picture Association of America, many of these Web sites have been forced to shut down. The program has been a serious problems for the movie industry -- as in some instances, pirated movies can be downloaded before they even hit theaters.
One of the most dramatic cases occurred in 1999, when Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace was released. The film was illegally recorded and distributed over the Internet via programs like BitTorrent; by the time the film came out legitimately in Asia, attendance was significantly lower than expected, the MPAA reported.
These examples of blatant piracy are surprisingly common, and they cost the movie industry an estimated $3 billion per year in potential worldwide revenue, according to the MPAA.
The most popular hub for the BitTorrent community, SuprNova.org, recently closed due to the pressure imposed by impending lawsuits. SuprNova was widely recognized as the center of the torrent community, having hosted more than 400,000 torrents at once in November, 2004. Another one of the most commonly used sites, LokiTorrent.com, is still in operation despite having been sued by the MPAA in Texas.
SuprNova's closing is only a small victory for protectors of copyrighted content, however, as the trend of illegal downloading only seems to be getting worse.
"BitTorrent use has slowed for the regular user, the normal college student," said College sophomore Alan Dang, a self-proclaimed BitTorrent fanatic. "For the computer-savvy person, nothing has really changed."
Now, the difficulty in downloading through BitTorrent is just a matter of knowing what Web sites to go to. These file locaters, known as "hubs," have not completely disappeared -- they're simply harder to find.
The information is now available on obscure Web sites, dubbed "topsites," because only a select group of people knows where to find them.
Despite the fact that these lawsuits have curbed some of BitTorrent's popularity, they will likely have little long-term effect. Bram Cohen, creator of the program, is already in the process of developing a newer version.
New software similar to BitTorrent is also starting to appear. The most promising of these is called eXeem, developed by the creator of SuprNova. It relies on a decentralized searchable network similar to that of Kazaa.
EXeem has already been distributed in a closed Beta test -- meaning that it is still in its developing stages. But it could become the next BitTorrent almost overnight.
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