P2P

File sharing is the act of sharing downloadable files on the Internet with other Internet users. This act is very common and often illegal. Often times the files being shared are supposed to be bought but are being shared and dispersed to thousands of Internet users for free. There are many off-shore sites that people can visit to download torrents, pdfs, and more.

P2P is peer-to-peer computing which equally disperses the liability amongst the people involved. This means that people intertwined in P2P both upload and download the content being shared. A popular network is BitTorrent. BitTorrent involves "seeding" which means that a user can upload a file and allow other users to download the file as long as they stay online in the P2P network. The uploader provides the "seed" for the other users. As discussed in "The BitTorrent Effect" article, the more popular the original seed file is, the quicker it can be downloaded.

It is obvious why there are so many new laws being brought to light in regards to P2P sharing. Many industries such as entertainment and book publishing lose tons of money each year due to file sharing. The touchiness of the subject is discussed in "Should Online Scofflaws Be Denied Web Access?". The topic of freedom of information being a defense for online file sharing is brought to light in this article.

Privacy and Confidentiality

New media has made communication easier and faster than ever before. We are able to virtually connect with one another live any second of the day. Since so many people use new media to communicate, there is a ton of information stored on servers and websites like Facebook. This can cause some problems when it comes to privacy and confidentiality. Many people are not aware of the amount of personal information being stored constantly while they use new media. In addition, new media such as social media sites encourage people to post various things about themselves. This can include anything from address to selfies. With this social media trend, people tend to share way more about their lives than they normally would. All of this information is stored permanently regardless of whether or not the individual deletes their postings later on. This information can be sold to corporations or given to the government. In addition, many employers search through prospective employees' social media accounts which can be intrusive on their personal privacy.

Advice to Baruch College

If I were hired by Baruch to implement better use of new media, I would immediately revamp the Baruch website, Blackboard, and CunyFirst. In general, all three can use a lot of change as far as media upgrades. Blackboard has discussion boards which work similarly to a blog in my opinion, to encourage more collaborative discussions, there should be an option to create Blackboard wikis. The Baruch website looks very out-of-date, I would redesign the site to make it more interactive and visually appealing. CunyFirst is just a mess. New media can be used to make communication to administrators on CunyFirst much easier. I would install some sort of messaging feature so that students can easily talk to an admin when they run into problems (which is currently very often).