A bit on P2P

In the beginning there was Napster.  And it was good.

So originally peer to peer networks were little more than a LAN with a search function.  Look into everyone's shared folders and download from them.  Then we got Napster which let us hook up with people around the world and download pieces of the same file from multiple people so it was faster.  Napster kept a database of who had what files.  That centralized architecture led to them being a target by copyright holders.  Eventually file sharing evolved to torrents.  Something like the Pirate Bay doesn't hold the list of who owns what.  Now they hold torrent files which by themselves are nothing.  When put into a torrent client program, the torrents seek out the file associated with the torrent across all torrent clients.  Before torrents, you had to decide if you were searching the Napster network or the Limewire network or whatever.  With torrents, all networks are searched at once, resulting in better connections from more people and faster downloads.

The actual process is like when Mike Teevee goes across the room in Willy Wonka, but with multiple copies of Mike Teevee being sampled and reassembled by the client program.

The copyright part of all this is that most of the content "shared" doesn't belong to the person sharing and is being shared without permission.  In the early days, there was a real push that it was a legitimate platform for new artists.  People would tag their original music with "(like Limp Bizkit)" or "(If you like Weird Al you'll like this)".  I would search for "comedy" and get weird songs that never became well known but were hilarious.  As connection speeds increased though, more movies and albums were shared and the well-intentioned movement was overshadowed by the copyright violators.

Something to remember is that it can take hours to convert a stolen movie to a sharable format and there is no compensation model in the effort.  It's always been really weird to think that people are out there are putting all this effort for... a good feeling.  It's a feeling of rebellion, or a feeling of community, or a feeling of prestige inside the community for being known for quality or rarity, or a feeling that all information should be free and without copyright as a political statement.

People downloading files are often caught.  I don't know much about what happens after that.  It is possible to see the IP addresses of people copying a file from you so copyright holders will download a popular torrent they want to scare people away from then watch the IP addresses.  They send a stern letter to the internet provider of that IP address.  Usually the internet provider tells them to piss off, but sends a stern letter to the user.  This, I assume, is to show some sort of compliance with the copyright holders, but more to dissuade the user from file sharing in general which can clog data lines with large file transfers.

Fun fact: In 2000, I saw that Madonna's "Music" music video was going to have a world premiere on MTV.  I wrote a paper on p2p and part of it was timing how long it took from it's airing on MTV to being available to download on Napster (back when there was less than 1 GB in the whole network).  I think it was 28 minutes.

Fun fact:  File sharers love the Oscars.  All those Blu-ray copies sent out to so many Academy judges.  Some of the movies have just come out in theaters.  Someone along the chain of custody of every single movie will put it online and then we get a great copy of a new movie with the added bonus of a subtitle saying something like "Property of Disney - For Academy Consideration Only"

Fun fact:  My all time favorite file is the "workprint" for X-Men Origins: Wolverine that had the full movie with only half the effects finished.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5AsOEk-ZJU