P2P

File sharing is when one person uploads a files to the internet to make publicly available for anyone else to access online.

P2P (Peer 2 Peer) file sharing is where, instead of uploading files publicly, users connect directly to each other, typically using a program of some sort, so they can share files like music, videos, programs, or various other documents.

The most notorious examples from when P2P file sharing started to initially get very popular was music sharing services like Napster and Kazaa. These days, most people use torrent sites like The Pirate Bay, which give you files that you can open up in a program like BitTorrent and it allows you to anonymously establish a P2P connection with various uses to help share files.

The problem with P2P file sharing is that it is frequently used to pirate stuff like music, films, TV shows, video games, and even books. Companies like the RIAA are constantly trying to find ways to fight against it by aiming to take down sites like The Pirate Bay.

There are legal usages that can benefit these companies that has mostly gone untapped though. The Econsultancy article "Content producers should take advantage of P2P, not fear it" talks about a documentary film that was released several years ago named "Steal This Film - Part One", which looked at the people that set up online P2P and to talk through the negatives and benefits of it. They distributed this film for free through BitTorrent and made their money through donations, which turned out to be a success for them. They ended up discovering that there was a big market for people who would support media monetarily if it was made easily available to them and without advertisements to hinder their experience.

The other major benefit of using P2P to legally share files is that it does not requiring online storage, which typically has to be paid for if the files are big enough. Some MMORPG games have used this when they update their games with major patches that their users all have to download. This reduces their server costs by a very large amount, as these games typically have users in the millions all hammering their servers.

Wiki So Far

Most of what I have contributed to the wiki so far is adding specific information on some of the more popular genres of video games. They have evolved to the point where a lot of the genres blend, or there's variations on many of the genres, so it can be really hard to describe what a video game is like to a person that does not know these genres. Having a baseline idea of the main genres can go a long way toward helping people quickly understand what someone means when someone calls a game a "first person shooter" or a "MOBA".

My other main contribution so far was adding a page for professional wrestling. I only added a basic description on the origins of it and a short explanation on how it evolved into what it is today, but in the future I plan on adding information about a lot of the main organizations in professional wrestling, as it is not only the WWE as most people seem to believe. I also want to add pictures and videos highlighting some of the top performers in each of the organizations.

In the future I also want to add content to the music page, specifically more information on rap artists and even a section for music from video games, as I have a lot of personal interest in them.

Privacy

With the rise of social media also came the rise of people being more willing to share their own personal information with the public. Before the initial popularity explosion of Facebook, most people were unwilling to share their real names online. Even when MySpace was popular, most people used an alias over their real names on it. Now however not only can you find people's real names, but you can easily fully profile a person based on what they share. Advertisers have noticed this and used it to great effect with their targeting marketing, especially through Google's ads, which run on an algorithm based on what you share about yourself online and even keeps track of products that you search for. This kind of information is highly valued by a lot of companies to the point where a lot of software platforms, even Windows 10, all ask you for permission to share your information confidentially, so they can make money off of the data.

While people are not willing to share everything publicly, they are willing to send people that are close to them very sensitive material either through text, or video. The problem is that this information gets stored on "the cloud" which is just storage on a server somewhere that can be accessed online, so access to this sensitive material is only a hack away from being public. Most people using these platforms are either unaware of this, do not want to give up the benefits of online storage, or as simply unwilling to figure out how to opt out of using online storage for their private material. Because of this, the importance of internet security is at an all time high.

Advice

If Baruch College hired me to use new media to improve their college experience, my I would help in setting up the integration of student social media accounts into their main website. The website would be set up similarly to something like Brooklyn College's web connect, but the general goal would be letting students who opt in have easy access to each other for various activities like offering tutoring services, selling their old books, setting up social events, or even group study meetings. This would be beneficial because most students like getting all their information through one source, which usually means whatever their preferred social media platform is. Integration like this would mean that it can reach students on those platforms with information that they might be interested in and they would be more inclined to participate, which would improve the college experience for everyone.