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People surveyed about whether or not they prefer to keep anonymity when using flittering sites

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What mediums do you use while filesharing?

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What Mediums of File Sharing Do You Use

File sharing has an incredibly diverse range of users. They can vary from simply sharing someone’s post on Facebook to entire communities of file sharers compiling movies or music together. Social media sites are however the most commonly used form of file sharing. These most commonly consist of sites like Facebook or Twitter. File sharing on these sites usually revolves around sharing articles or memes. Then there are more artistic forms social media involving file sharing. 

The most commonly used sites of this variety tend to be Tumblr and Pinterest. Here users share things like their personal blogs or art they have made. Once you step outside of the realm of social media file sharing becomes a lot more intricate than just making a post or clicking the share button. It starts simply with payed services for digital media like ITunes for music or Steam for video games. Naturally people don’t like paying money for things so this gave rise to less restricted forms of obtaining these files, like torrents and file lockers. The Cyberlocker 4shared caps out the top of the list with around 55,000,000 unique visitors each month. Perhaps not as widely used, but at least as well known is the torrent index The Pirate Bay. Users of these forms of file sharing are locked in a seemingly never ending battle with the original content creators, constantly having old files removed until the users inevitably find a new torrent of the file they are searching for. 

File sharing has come an incredibly long way, and with it, many industries have been born. While it may provide difficulty to the many big media conglomerates, it has no doubt been to the benefit of many independent creators. Distribution is no longer restricted to the lucky few, which truly shows as thousands of artists share their work for free online every single year.

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Do you try to keep anonymity when using file-sharing websites?

According to our data, over 84% of the 36 people surveyed said that they prefer to stay anonymous when using file-sharing sites. This is more than likely because of legality issues many of these sites face when sharing music, videos and other content. Not all file sharing is illegal, such as sharing a YouTube video on Facebook, or tweeting a news article. Illegal file-sharing is when download and share copyrighted content, thus taking making the content creators lose money. The consequences of getting caught downloading copyrighted material can be up to 5 years in jail or fines up to $150,000 per file. Additionally the content creator can press charges, which will result in more legal fees and fines (Illegal Downloading & File Sharing, 2016). It is these hefty penalties that keep many file sharers in fear, and is why many choose to remain anonymous.

This anonymity makes it somewhat difficult to study file sharers, as we don’t exactly know whom to ask about it. This is why we used an anonymous survey to collect data. We did get some people who said that they do not worry about anonymity, but those numbers could extremely likely to be in the group who use more legal means of file sharing like Facebook.

 Source: "Illegal Downloading & File Sharing." Webster University. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2016.

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This was our survey question: Do you interact with other file sharers online?

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Do you interact with other file sharers online?

Do you interact with file sharers online? We wanted to ask this question because the lack of social interface is something that sets apart filesharing website users from other website users.

(Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Vine, etc.)

The overwhelming response we got when the survey was put out was no. Most people said that they did not infact interact with other file sharers online.

Now that we have some real world data to work with, let's try and see why file sharers don't interact with each other. The first and most obvious answer to this question has to do with the illegality of file sharing. Although it's rare to be caught, it is technically illegal to use filesharing websites. This creates an uneasy social community within the file sharers, because no one wants to use real names and information. Therefore, it's impossible to really have friends on a file sharing website. Another reason file sharers could not interact with each other online is because of the lack of social interface. Almost every other group of users from the internet is based around some sort of social network. Whether people are sharing ideas, videos, pictures or artwork they all revolve around real people sharing real things. The only time people can interact on filesharing websites is when they comment on a torrent, which is only allowed on some torrenting websites. Although this is social interaction, the anonymity of the person's online keeps people from truly interacting. The reason people comment is typically for general information like the type, size, or other information about the file.

So it seems pretty clear as to the reason file sharers do not interact with each other, but how does this information set apart the file sharing group of users from all the other groups of users? Almost every other group of users on the internet is either based around something everyone loves (a group of fans) or something everyone uses (social media). File Sharers however are grouped around more of a illegal concept, of everyone pitching in a little bit of data so we can all have free things. Its really a great concept, but the illegality of it as I stated above keeps people from chatting. Its a very vague and quiet group of people, but it might be one of the biggest on the web.