File Sharing Research Articles

Resilient GIA

The core activity of any P2P system is File Sharing. In any system where many peers are connected, several replicas of same file may be present but the challenge, especially in an unstructured p2p overlay, is to make sure that there exist certain copies of the latest version for performing any read / write operation. We propose to achieve this using Voting Algorithm over any unstructured p2p (in our case, we chose GIA protocol). Voting algorithm assigns votes to each replica, based upon certain properties like its bandwidth or reliability etc of the node containing that replica. Any read/ write is allowed to be performed only if the requesting process is able to cross the minimum threshold (read / write quorum). We propose our framework through examples and simulations over OverSim Simulator.

Blind-environment interaction through voice augmented objects

This article presents an Java-based mobile service that enables blind-environment interaction through voice-augmented objects. To make this possible, it is necessary to tag the object with an associated radio frequency identification and record its voice-based description. The blind users can later use the service to scan surrounding augmented objects and verbalize their identity and characteristics. We use a user centred design in order to guarantee the accessibility of the service for visually impaired and blind people. The required hardware is a near field communication-enabled mobile phone with built-in accelerometer. The client-side application does not require pushing any buttons, browsing any menus, or touching any screens to select and activate any of supported modes: registration, calibration, voice recording, physical object identification, delete voice recording(s), cloud-based file sync and share. Twelve visually impaired individuals (aged 31–84, 6 men and 6 women) have tested the service in two different scenarios: (1) a test based on comparison with a PenFriend labeling unit, and (2) a users’ experience test. The results show that selected tangible, multimodal interface (object touching, phone shaking and tilt, voice output) can be used very easily (58 %) or easily (33 %) by blind and visually impaired users who have had no previous experience with other mobile services. Most of participants from the test group agreed that the service could be useful for their daily activities. The service can be used both at home and in public buildings for voice description of objects such as food, medicines, books, clothes, cosmetics, CD/DVDs, rooms, etc.

Research on concurrency control algorithm for real-time collaborative editing systems

Real-time collaborative editing systems are important groupware tools in the computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) field. They support geographically dispersed users to edit shared files, graphics, etc. simultaneously. Currently popular real-time collaborative editing systems mostly use plain text data for edit and synchronization, and the corresponding operations are deleting, adding or modifying characters. The data acquisition system's metadata in this article is the module, such as deleting, adding or modifying a certain question. On the basis of differential synchronization algorithms and generic operation transformation (GOT) algorithm, this paper proposes a new concurrency control algorithm differential synchronization and generic operation transformation control algorithm (DSGOT).

Empirical Copyright: A Case Study of File Sharing and Music Output

In copyright, we are guided by a simple intuition: More revenue leads to more original works. But the relationship between revenue and creative output is not so simple. Broadening copyright in order to increase the revenue associated with any given work may ensure the expected profitability, and hence the creation, of additional works at the margins. At the same time, however, because copyright protection is uniform, broadening copyright also increases the revenue associated with works that are not at the margins, works that would have been profitable and so brought forth with less or even no copyright protection. As copyright broadens, it increases the “excess” incentives associated with these preexisting works. As these excess incentives grow, they may, at some point, lead popular authors to substitute leisure for work, and so perversely lead to fewer works from our most popular authors. Broader copyright may thus entail a trade-off between two marginal effects: More original works from new authors along one margin, but fewer original works from the most popular existing authors along a second. If the second effect outweighs the first, then more revenue may lead to fewer original works. Conversely, less revenue may lead to more original works. While this may seem radically counterintuitive, it also happens to be true. To explore the relationship between copyright protection, revenue, and creative output, I treat the rise of file sharing and the parallel fall in music industry revenue as a natural experiment in radically reduced copyright protection. Using a hand-coded data set, covering songs in the top fifty of the Billboard Hot 100 from 1985 through 2013, and regression analysis, I show that the sharp decline in music industry revenue that paralleled the rise of file sharing was associated, ceteris paribus: (i) with fewer new artists entering the market; but (ii) also with more hit songs, on average, by those new artists who did enter. Moreover, because the second marginal effect was larger than the first, the decline in revenue since file sharing began was associated with a net increase in the number of new hit songs, ceteris paribus. Thus, for the music industry, the rise of file sharing and the parallel decline in revenue has meant the creation of more new music.

Launching a Report on Unlawful File Sharing

. Volume 11, Issue 1, April 2014 Piers Fleming* Daniel John Zizzo * Steven James Watson** Cite as: P Fleming, D Zizzo and S Watson, “Launching a Report on File Sharing”, (2014) 11:1 SCRIPTed 128 http://script-ed.org/?p=1442 Download PDFDOI:

A Lightweight Software Design for Seamless Home Multimedia Services

People now possess various home-networked devices that are capable of upgraded computing, extensible storage, multimedia processing, and network connectivity functions. With broadband home networking technologies, such devices can perform media content distribution in a home network and play shared media files in a n etworked fashion. When users with portable home- networked devices are free to move in residential areas, they can cause the so-called playing discontinuity problem because device movement can tear down any ongoing network connections for data transferring and then terminate any ongoing media playing services in home networks. To contend with this problem, this paper proposes a software architecture for seamless home multimedia services in ubiquitous home computing environments. This architecture design contains three functional components, including network connection, media transfer, and media playing functionalities, all of which are designed on the base of standard Internet protocol suites. As a result of a lightweight software design, the propos ed architecture is platform-independent and can be activated inside an application-level execution context. Home-networked devices can incorporate this application-level software without need to modify underlying hardware configurations, system kernel modules , and operating systems. Prototype development implements the software packages and applications, which are able to keep ongoing media playing services from playing discontinuity and interruption when home-networked devices move in an administrative network domain. Scenario demonstration shows that the proposed software architecture is able to provide seamless home multimedia services with better user experience for multimedia entertainment in residential environments.

Managing heterogeneous datasets

In disciplines that produce a wide variety of data – such as materials engineering – it can be difficult to provide an infrastructure for storing, managing, sharing and exploring datasets, particularly whilst that data is still in use. The Heterogeneous Data Centre (HDC) is an extension to a file server that provides scientists with tools for exploring their datasets, managing relationships between them and adding metadata. Many of the features evolved from close consultation with our users. In this paper, we evaluate the HDC׳s interface features for managing datasets using data provided by users from the materials engineering and human genetics domains. In particular, we show the simplicity of capturing data through a file share and the flexibility and extensibility of a system supporting hierarchical metadata, dataset relationships and plug-ins.

What is the Effect of File Sharing on the Creation of New Music? A Critical Review of 'A Case Study of File Sharing and Music Output'

In a recent and unpublished study — Empirical Copyright: A Case Study of File Sharing and Music Output — Tulane University Law Professor Glynn Lunney, Jr., concludes that “file sharing has not reduced the creation of new original music.” The claim is based on the correlation of music sales over time to the appearance of “new artists”, narrowly defined, appearing at the top of BILLBOARD’s Hot 100 chart. In this PERSPECTIVE, I provide a review of Dr. Lunney’s paper. Unfortunately, the empirical analysis in Dr. Lunney’s paper is some of the weakest in this area, and the defects in the analysis are many and varied. Put plainly, his statistical analysis is inexpertly performed; the empirical model is poorly motivated, poorly designed, and improperly estimated. Moreover, contrary to his claim, his results do not support his theory. Alternative and more plausible interpretations of Professor Lunney’s results suggest piracy has the expected negative consequences on the creative industries.

Book Review: Caetlin Benson-Allott, Killer Tapes and Shattered Screens: Video Spectatorship from VHS to File Sharing

Book Review: Caetlin Benson-Allott, <i>Killer Tapes and Shattered Screens: Video Spectatorship from VHS to File Sharing</i>

Peer-to-peer as an infrastructure service

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) communication has attracted significant interest from both academia and industry, and has become a successful communication paradigm for diverse Internet applications, including file sharing, live streaming, and video on demand. Today P2P applications account for over 70 % of the Internet traffic, and the percentage is still growing. P2P has also been used to facilitate the development of such new generation of applications as social networking and cloud computing. Many of these systems use P2P as an underlying engine to boost their performance and to reduce the deployment costs. Examples include the Amazon EC2 cloud platform that opens a dedicated interface for BitTorrent, and LeafWeb P2P gaming platform that allows users to invite others from their Facebook profiles to play online games. Yet there remain a number of challenges for P2P to be a fundamental infrastructure service for pervasive Internet applications: It is necessary to deal with peer churns to provide stable and robust quality-of-service; the inventiveness of individual users and that of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have to be carefully addressed for incorporating a P2P engine; and security issues have been brought to the front end as substantial P2P based attacks, viruses and botnets appear. These problems can be even more severe with the emerging new applications. The objective of this special issue is to summarize the recent research and development toward making P2P a better infrastructure service. After a thorough review process, ten papers were accepted after revision and a second round of review (some with a third round of review). The first set of papers discuss the traffic management and content sharing in peer-to-peer systems. Paper “On the Collaboration of Different Peer-to-Peer Traffic Management Schemas” by Xin Liu, Haiyang Wang, and Lei Zhangaims to solve the pressure on the ISPs from P2P traffic. Different with the existing schemes that only use caching or redirection, they combines the two methods together with a coherent framework, Tod-Cache (Traffic Orientated Distributed Caching). Paper “The Performance and Locality Tradeoff in BitTorrent-like File Sharing Systems” by Wei Huang, Chuan Wu, Zongpeng Li, and Francis C.M. Lau characterizes the performance and locality tradeoff in P2P as a multi-objective b-matching optimization problem and designs fully distributed peer selection algorithms. Paper “BufferBank: A Distributed Cache Infrastructure For Peer-to-peer Application” by Huang Bin, Sun Zhigang, Chen Hongyi, Mao Jianbiao, Zhang Ziwen proposes a distributed P2P caching infrastructure named BufferBank in the edge of network. This infrastructure uses the memory of users at the edge network as the cache space and the authors also provide a number of application interfaces for P2P applications to use the cache space. Paper “A Scalable P2P Overlay Based on Arrangement Graph with Minimized Overhead” by Ssu-Hsuan Lu, KuanChing Li, Kuan-Chou Lai, and Yeh-Ching Chung examines J. Liu (*) Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada e-mail: jcliu@sfu.ca

Shared files: The retrieval perspective

People who are collaborating can share files in two main ways: performing Group Information Management (GIM) using a common repository or performing Personal Information Management (PIM) by distributing files as e‐mail attachments and storing them in personal repositories. There is a trend toward using common repositories with many organizations encouraging workers to use GIM to avoid duplication of files and management. So far, PIM and GIM have been studied by different research communities, so their effectiveness for file retrieval has not yet been systematically compared. We compared PIM and GIM in a large‐scale elicited personal information retrieval study. We asked 275 users to retrieve 860 of their own shared files, testing the effect of sharing method on success and efficiency of retrieval. Participants preferred PIM over GIM. More important, PIM retrieval was more successful: Participants using GIM failed to find 22% of their files compared with 13% failures using PIM. This may be because active organization aids retrieval: When using personally created folders, the failure percentage was 65% lower than when using default folders (e.g., My Documents), and more than 5 times lower than when using folders created by others for GIM. Theoretical reasons for this are discussed.

LR2: Improving Push-Based Live Streaming and File Sharing in Peer-to-Peer Network

Random scheduling strategy has been emphasized and recommended in push-based P2P streaming systems due to its simplicity and high efficiency, and so is the latest first strategy in file sharing systems. However, how to take advantage of the low playout delay feature in the latest first strategy and the high playout probability feature in the random strategy still remains open. In this paper, we propose the LR2 strategy, which incorporates a segmented chunk selection strategy and a random push strategy. Compared with existent strategies, the LR2 strategy has higher playout probability and lower playout delay in live streaming, and has shorter last finish time in file sharing. On the other hand, live streaming and file sharing are unified into the same modeling framework in our strategy, and we think it can provide fundamental insights into studies on the integrated optimization of live streaming and file sharing in P2P network

Leveraging Social Networks for P2P Content-Based File Sharing in Disconnected MANETs

Current peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing methods in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) can be classified into three groups: flooding-based, advertisement-based, and social contact-based. The first two groups of methods can easily have high overhead and low scalability. They are mainly developed for connected MANETs, in which end-to-end connectivity among nodes is ensured. The third group of methods adapts to the opportunistic nature of disconnected MANETs but fails to consider the social interests (i.e., contents) of mobile nodes, which can be exploited to improve the file searching efficiency. In this paper, we propose a P2P content-based file sharing system, namely SPOON, for disconnected MANETs. The system uses an interest extraction algorithm to derive a node's interests from its files for content-based file searching. For efficient file searching, SPOON groups common-interest nodes that frequently meet with each other as communities. It takes advantage of node mobility by designating stable nodes, which have the most frequent contact with community members, as community coordinators for intracommunity searching, and highly mobile nodes that visit other communities frequently as community ambassadors for intercommunity searching. An interest-oriented file searching scheme is proposed for high file searching efficiency. Additional strategies for file prefetching, querying-completion, and loop-prevention, and node churn consideration are discussed to further enhance the file searching efficiency. We first tested our system on the GENI Orbit testbed with a real trace and then conducted event-driven experiment with two real traces and NS2 simulation with simulated disconnected and connected MANET scenarios. The test results show that our system significantly lowers transmission cost and improves file searching success rate compared to current methods.

Intra-observer reproducibility of whole slide imaging for the primary diagnosis of breast needle biopsies

Background: Automated whole slide imaging (WSI), also known as virtual microscopy is rapidly becoming an important tool in diagnostic pathology. Currently, the primary utilization of the technique is for transmission of digital images, for second opinion consultation, as well as for quality assurance and education. The high-resolution of digital images along with the refinement of technology could now allow for WSI to be used as an alternative to conventional microscopy (CM) as a first line diagnostic platform. However, the accuracy and reproducibility of the technology for the routine histopathologic diagnosis has not been established yet. This study was undertaken to compare the intra-observer variability of WSI and CM in the primary diagnosis of breast biopsies. Materials and Methods: One hundred and three consecutive core needle biopsies of breast were selected for this study. Each slide was digitally scanned and the images were stored in a shared file. Three board-certified pathologists independently reviewed the glass slides by CM first, and in an interval of 2-3 weeks for the 2nd time to establish their baseline CM versus CM reproducibility. They then reviewed the digital images of all cases following the same interval of time to compare the reproducibility of WSI versus CM for each observer. The diagnostic categories included the typical range of benign and malignant mammary lesions. Results: The intra-observer variability for CM versus CM was 4%, 7%, and 0% for observers 1, 2, and 3 respectively. The diagnostic variability for WSI versus CM was 1%, 4%, and 1% for the same observers. All diagnostic disagreements were between ductal hyperplasia and atypical ductal hyperplasia. There was no intra-observer disagreement in the diagnosis of benign versus malignant disease. Conclusions: The intra-observer variability in the diagnosis of the core needle biopsies of the breast by high-resolution, WSI was the same as conventional glass slide microscopy. These results suggest that, WSI could be used similar to CM for the initial diagnosis of breast biopsies.

Tree-Based Consistency Maintenance Scheme for Peer-to-Peer File Sharing of Editable Contents

Tree-Based Consistency Maintenance Scheme for Peer-to-Peer File Sharing of Editable Contents

Scaling up genome annotation using MAKER and work queue.

Next generation sequencing technologies have enabled sequencing many genomes. Because of the overall increasing demand and the inherent parallelism available in many required analyses, these bioinformatics applications should ideally run on clusters, clouds and/or grids. We present a modified annotation framework that achieves a speed-up of 45x using 50 workers using a Caenorhabditis japonica test case. We also evaluate these modifications within the Amazon EC2 cloud framework. The underlying genome annotation (MAKER) is parallelised as an MPI application. Our framework enables it to now run without MPI while utilising a wide variety of distributed computing resources. This parallel framework also allows easy explicit data transfer, which helps overcome a major limitation of bioinformatics tools that often rely on shared file systems. Combined, our proposed framework can be used, even during early stages of development, to easily run sequence analysis tools on clusters, grids and clouds.

File Annotation and Sharing on Low end Devices in PAN

Fast development in low end devices permits so many extra aspects including huge storage capacity, sharing of data, formation of network, etc. User can use these aspects very efficiently. When data size is limited searching a particular file can done easily but difficulty comes when data size increases and it involves large collection of mobile nodes. In that case arrangement of data i.e. data organization and management become irritating work. However file system of devices itself provides a way to store similar files separately; still it becomes irritating when number of files increases. Even poor UI (User Interface) increases more difficulty in case of file retrieval. This paper presents model that allows user to annotate files and to search a file of interest on mobile devices. File is annotated using their spatial, common and temporal circumstance which are extracted from underlining operating system and used as a metadata which is used for searching a file of interest. The file search can be achieved on mobile itself or on other mobile also those are connected in Personal Area Network (PAN) using Bluetooth. The proposed model allows file annotation, file search, creating PAN (Personal Area Network), file sharing, etc. General Terms File Annotation System, Meta data, Parsing.

File Sharing and Copyright; A Response to Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf

File sharing takes up approximately 25% of internet traffic. The great majority of these files are connected with violations of authors’ and related rights. The revenues of the recorded music have shrunk to approximately 40% since their highest levels in the second half of the 90’s, while at the same time file-sharing has been expanding globally. The audiovisual and publishing industries, which stand next in line, appear even more vulnerable in their losses, since they actually lack any ‘complementary sources of income’, such as the live performances in the music sector.The present text starts with an analytical critique of the article with the same title by F. Oberholzer-Gee and K. Strumpf (2010) and of the relevant argumentation regarding the absolution of file sharing in its economic consequences, while at the same time it doubts the positive causal relation between file sharing and social welfare, that the two authors note by observing a production increase. Presenting new data and assessing the relative sources, it aims to contribute to the open discussion of the subject.

File Sharing and the History of Computing: Or, Why File Sharing is Called “File Sharing”

Attempts by the state and the entertainment industry to impose the term “piracy” on practices of digital file sharing have been challenged by academics and activists alike. The notion of “file sharing,” however, seems to have escaped our attention. By placing that term in the context of the history of computing, where sharing of different kinds has always been a central feature, and by drawing on a nuanced understanding of the many meanings of “sharing,” this article shows that “file sharing,” unlike “piracy,” is a bottom-up term that has emerged from the field itself. The article shows that those who oppose the term “file sharing” certainly have good strategic reason to do so: sharing is by definition a positive social value and bestows a warm glow upon that which it touches. It is argued, though, that we should not allow the “war on piracy” metaphor to gain the ascendancy—not only because “piracy” is a such a negative term, and not only for strategic reasons, but also, and mainly, because when we call file sharing “file sharing” we are issuing a critical challenge to the current copyright regime.

The Role of Restrictiveness of Use in Determining Ethical and Legal Awareness of Unauthorized File Sharing

A host of different types of information goods are available for free download from illegal file sharing sites. As far as price is concerned, no company can compete against “free.” Hence, managers, researchers, and policy makers are interested in determining factors other than price that might influence consumers’ file sharing behavior. Moral consideration is one factor that might sway individuals to pay for files they could otherwise obtain for free. To help better understand how moral consideration works in the context of file sharing, this research examines how people form perceptions of the legality and ethicalness of downloading music files through file sharing. We propose that when people receive files in a more restrictive manner (e.g. streaming vs. downloading) they are less likely to recognize file sharing as being unethical or illegal. We conduct five studies to test our theory of restrictiveness. The results consistently indicate that consumers’ perceptions of legality and ethicalness of file sharing are associated with restrictiveness of use. In particular, while file sharing with different levels of restrictiveness still transfers intellectual property from one individual to another, increased restrictiveness results in consumers being less likely to identify file sharing as being illegal or unethical. This in turn has a great impact on their actual engagement in the unauthorized file sharing activities. We find the relationships are significant even when controlling for several other elements such as gender, age, income, and prior knowledge about how and where to go on the internet to participate in file sharing.