Kazaa and Peer to Peer File Sharing Designs of Innovation
... One of these new highly powerful but controversial technologies is peer-to-peer file sharing, which has revolutionized the world’s ability to share digital information. While the peer-to-peer file sharing technology has existed for quite some time in forms such as a series of networked computers, never before has it been used on an international level, with the majority of its users under the United States’ legal voting age. For example, within my own group of friends and acquaintances (both online and offline, international and domestic) the terms “music download” and “file sharing” have become not only meaningful in the vernacular, but intrinsically synonymous with each other and utterly routine. ... This sort of sharing and communication through digital media discriminates against no one; it is potentially open to each and every person. The fact that the power of peer-to-peer technology is embraced and fully comprehended by the upcoming generation worldwide can only imply great things for future international technology, artistic innovation, creativity, and diplomacy. ... Because of the brilliant way it is implemented by the music and software file sharing program Kazaa Media Desktop. Essentially, Kazaa eliminates the middle man from every facet of the music and entertainment distribution industry, creating a networked interface of people all around the world who supply the digital media to be shared directly with each other. Spelled out very simply, Kazaa users have the access and ability to search for and download nearly every digital media file they can dream of. ... Kazaa is a program that uses a technology that was inevitable. After all, following the invention of the wheel, people were bound to use it for its obvious benefits in advancing technology – quite analogous to Kazaa. Although, this program is very good in design and concept as the “reigning king of post-Napster,” there are user-unfriendly drawbacks and of course, pirated music issues and hassles which have yet to be resolved (“Kazaa Media Desktop – Download. ... With this said, I firmly believe that it will become the next prototype of a standard tool for media sharing in years to come. Kazaa is a product of Sharman Networks, which, according to the Kazaa website, is “a proactive, virtual, global technology and publishing company, focused on delivering peer-to-peer software.” Kazaa’s program design can be broken up into two main categories of interest for this particular analysis: 1) User friendliness and efficiency and 2) security and privacy. The user interface is probably the best designed part of Kazaa and is what keeps Kazaa as “the most downloaded software, having overtaken the previous record-holder, ICQ, by reaching 230,309,616 worldwide downloads.