P2P.. have you heard of this word yet? You might be familiar with words like, file sharing, WinMX, KaZaA, Napster, or Winny.
Yes, those are so called P2P applications.
Today I'll explain what P2P is, and its potential danger.
First, what is P2P. As I said, P2P is easily explained if you have used KaZaA or WinMX, Overnet, Share-reactor, etc.
WinMX and Winny's sides are not big compare to KaZaA. If you see, however, their sides in Japan, two of them are
the biggest ones because they have Japanese interface. Now, what this P2P application does is, it connects each computers
and share or exchage, (well, more like copying each other's files) without having a big server, so each computers become a
part of the whole network. What people do with this is that they download (and upload) music files, movies, sometimes
softwares.
Then, here is a problem. Those files that have a copyright, are not permitted to copy without permission, but the reality is,
as you might have heard, Record Industry is dramatically losing their profit. People buy CD or music from online save it in
their computer, and somebody else downloads the file throught P2P. That's when it is illegal.
There have been many people who got caught by doing this, and the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has
sued companies and thousands of individuals. Companies have paid compensation (millions of dollars worth), 12 years old
girl was brought to a court, and ordered to pay 10,000 dollars. Japan is not an exception. It was the first time in the world
that police arrested individuals. In the US, things above are happening, but there is no law that can arrest people, but bring
them to a court. In Japan, there is a law so we get caught without any notice.
You might be wondering how they find poeple who have, installed P2P apps, and downloaded files with copyright. It is fairly
simple. When you download a file, your IP address will be known by your ISP (Internet Service Provier). IP address is something like ID for your
computer. Without this, you cannot connect to the Internet. Thus, your footsteps inevitably remain. Police, however,
cannot detect where you live, your names and so on by just knowing your IP address. So, they ask your ISP to tell them your information.
(Lately in Japan, about 4 million people's those kind of information leaked from the biggest ISP, so if you are one of them, the police
won't have to do things like these!)
In the US, if necessary the RIAA can order ISP to show them users information legally. So police can get individuals data without a problem.
What P2P does now is it hides your IP address, or more like it uses a fake IP address, so that ISP cannot deleted who you really are. There are
a couple of P2P applications that do that, and one of the most popular (at least in Japan) is Winny. It is supposed to show fake IP address so that
they won't notice it is your or not...
HOWEVER, Kyoto Police didn't give up this game. They developed a program that analize and decode Winny's sistem. Then, the developer of Wiiny and
several users have been arrested. The biggest issue for P2P now is this 'hiding' IP adress, but from the best of my knowledge, no one has succeeded
perfect crime.
According to a research, there are more and more P2P users every day, and it is believe that there are 2 million users in Japan (most of them use
either WinMX or Winny). Also, it is assumed that there are tens of millions of people who uses the biggest P2P, KaZaA. Thus, the speed is too fast to
arrest them all, but a number of people who got caught is getting more and more every year, so those who uses P2P, and thse who have just found
that you are a P2P user, I think you should consider what you are really doing.
Note:
Sharing files is more risky than downloading.
Many files have digital finger print.
In the US, it is said that having one illegally downloaded music file costs you about 1,000 dollars.
If there is one computer on a network has a P2P application, there is a risk that all the computers on the network are easily accessed from ourside P2P users.
Thus, company's private infomation can be stolen through opened firewall.
The bigger the P2P application size is, the more virus living there. (KaZaA has the biggest, of course).
