Person 2 Person

P2P is a glorified telephone in Evan’s world. It's communication in a special personal network a feature, not only of an optional ear piece, but also of a ring worn on the finger, making it easy and very discrete to be notified by his personal network of associates. It alerts him to the necessity of checking his incoming messages hands free, without having to wear his earpiece all the time. and without disturbing other people by a noise. In the real world, P2P is a computer system network where every “peer” is equal and every computer in the system assumes the roles of both client and server.

It’s interesting how when P2P computer systems were first in use they were to be based upon an Internet Provider (IP) address using a Domain Name Server (DNS) where a change in an Internet Provider (IP) address would be considered abnormal or rare. But with the P2P it turned out that system connected clients could pool their untapped recourses for the benefit of the whole system, giving access to “more power” within the group. There was more storage space, more bandwidth and more computing power for everyone.

When computers were new, the concept of having personal computers (one per household, one per person) wasn’t in the picture, but that all changed when the personal computer concept caught on. As more and more people connected to the Internet, the exponential power behind the concept of P2P emerged and suddenly a lot more unused, system resource could contribute to the collective energy/knowledge pool. In fact some space could be tapped to contribute computer power to the system undetected and never even be missed. Thus, the P2P concept made the Internet more accessible to everyone by freeing up clogged systems with networks that worked cooperatively and even made allowance for a greater bandwidth for all. But it still was not commonly known, until Napster.

It was Napster who made P2P famous, for through Napster more than 26.4 million music enthusiasts all over the world could download songs without having to actually “buy” them from the company or the artists that produced them. The artists lost a lot of money as a result, and Napster was formally charged in a court of law with "piracy," putting them in league with men like Edward Teach and Bartholomew Roberts.

Pirates?

Plundering riches from the rightful owners of copyrighted music or movies or software is called pirating, because like a pirate, you take what you want with no regard for the person from whom you are taking it.

But, "wait a minute," you say... there was no crime involved, so one was hurt, it's only fair to share music with people, with friends. You are taking this whole morals and ethics thing, just a little too far. Piracy? Stealing? It's just music and besides, I bought it. I can give it to anyone I Please."

Some people think that morals and ethics are overrated, or that sharing stuff “with friends” is biblical, you know, being a “good neighbor.” But the truth is that when people make purchases of music or videos or software, they make agreements for its use. You either agree with the law and comply with the law, or you are lawless, or a hypocrite that will say you agree with it, and then ignore it and do what you think is best regardless of the law.

It is legal for the purchaser to lend for view, or use, play and listen to together to the item purchased with a friend, even gift the item to friends and family, but the purchaser agrees that they will not give out a reproduction that does not come from legal channels. Only official distributors who have paid for the right to make reproductions may do so. Dispite all this legal mumbo jumbo, Napster reproduced music in MP3 format to lots of people and they did so for a fee. What they did was illegal, and the world had no shortage of people who wanted in on Napster’s plunder.

People who subscribed to Napster were happy to have access to all kinds of music. They could find the latest songs, cheap, and not have to buy the whole “album.” They could find “forgotten” songs that were out-of-print and distribution, even sometimes had access to songs that hadn’t been released yet, as was the case with a song by a band named Metallica. It was "bootlegged” music, (that is, music that wasn’t supposed to be recorded at all; such as from concerts, or unauthorized recordings.) Needless to say, recording companies and musicians lost millions of dollars; Napster became rich.

Like Robin hood, some Napster “pirates” simply convince themselves that they are somehow do-gooders, you know the type, they believe that they are merely “taking from the rich and giving to the poor, ” doing a noble deed of fairness, thinking that those people are rich and do not "need" the money like the less fortunate (mainly "me") do. These “do- gooding pirates” felt justified, in their dastardly deeds pointing to the fact that concerts and merchandise sales were the real money makers for the already filthy rich, elite, and power-hungry artists and record lords. "Pirating, nay, it jest be business ingenuity," on their part.

Some believe that anything anybody produced was fair game to anyone, and why not? These were the more reasonable sorts, those who held it was scientifically legitimate, a “survival of the fittest” mentality.

Others took the position that the Napster “pirates” only stole good stuff and therefore their actions should be seen as an asset to the music producers. They believed piracy actually served a greater purpose… that of showing the music industry the trends of public opinion, a sort of supply/demand kinda thing.

Others, in denial of everyone else's reality, were of the opinion that there is no such thing as pirating. They simply chose to believe that because it was a new electronic world, and everyone had electronics at their disposal, the established copyright laws protecting the artists' rights to their work was now suddenly meaningless and outdated for these modern times.

It was a war of ideas and it was taken to a court of law in 2002 resulting in the shut down of Napster. Napster was put out of the business; but there other P2P file-sharing programs out on the deep blue sea of technology that do continue to operate. Some of them are more “true” P2P’s, that is, they do not use a stable Domain Name System, (DNS) like Napster did. These pirates can store their booty anywhere in a network and be anyone in the network, anywhere in the world and access everyone in the network anytime. Their are still pirates, but even if someone is “caught” as a pirate, they are hard to track down because the sea of technology is so fluid, so vast and so deep, and it is continually changing.

The technological world is varied too, and music is not the only booty to interest such criminal minds. Their is politics and goods and services being plundered and pirates come in all shapes and sizes. There is concern in legal circles about untrackable P2P systems because they could be pirates, and they are hard to track in a system that's continually changing IP’s within their peer-oriented systems.

While P2P systems have a reputation for circumventing established law on purpose and open the imagination to a myriad of possibilities for criminal behavior P2P systems are not “all bad.” In fact, they are even being considered for use by universities and other educational entities as a means to share information in the future. If put to use, medical facilities, labs and research centers, police and hospitals could have immediate records available with a shared peer oriented system. There would be advantages.

In P2P systems, the flow of information would be quicker, the connections, less stagnant. Schools and universities could track test scores on students much easier. Everything from criminal records to disease outbreaks could be tracked and monitored, by professionals, in the blink of an eye, making this a safer world. P2P systems could be put to use in such a way that they would work for the common good of all, the problem at that point would not be pirates, but defectors.

Defectors in a P2P system are like leeches. They make use of the system without really contributing to it or they intentionally pollute or poison the system with things known to be “garbage” or “viruses.” Sometimes called “spammers” they clog the system on purpose. There are those who simply milk everything they can from the system for their own personal gain, essentially using the valuable resource of the network to market their own little business or product that now has to be seen by everyone on the network weather or not they want to.

The virtue of P2P technology remains to be seen and where it takes us, where human ingenuity goes with it depends on the kind of people we are and what we believe as we make use of it. We might be simplymake use of it as people to people, but then we might all be nothing but pirates.