Tools of the Download Generation

Lee, a 14-year old student, is sitting in her bedroom late at night with her broadband connected PC. She fires up her software which continuous scans the Internet for her favourite song as she’s chatting online with her friends. The software finds what she is looking for and prompts: “File found: Download now?.” Lee smiles (she’s been looking for this song for a while now) With a click of the button, Lee begins to download her song for free and within a couple of minutes has her song on her computer and synchronised automatically with her iPOD. She says goodbye to her friends online and jumps into bed listening to her newly downloaded song. As she falls asleep, she leaves a download running of a movie that was recently released on DVD and not even available in Australia yet.

Lee is part of the Download Generation. She feels no guilt and no shame in consuming digital music that is freely available on the net. So what are the tools of the trade that the Download Generation use to get access to free digital content?

P.O.F.G.S. (Plain-Old-Fashioned-Google-Search)

Performing a Google search for “Free music” or “free software” can result in some fairly interesting links. However, IP lawyers representing copyright holders continually scan the Internet and will aggressively pursue the owners of illegal sites. Obvious problems with this is that these site owners are created off-shore with minimal legal protection for copyright holders.

Peer-to-Peer

A peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network is a network that relies on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network rather than concentrating it in a relatively low number of servers. This means that rather the file exists on a central server, they are shared amongst the participants of the network. The file is broken into small chunks of data and shared. So in the case of Lee, as she downloads these chunks of her music file, they are automatically uploaded directly to other computers who are also interested in the same song. Once she has finished downloading the chunks are re-combined and ready for use. BitComet, LimeWire and Napster are the more common software on the market that utilises P2P networking.

Key Generator Cracks

Software programs generally ask the user to a key to verify that you have a legitimate piece of software. This key can be generated (“KeyGen” in Internet slang) by combining two or more bits of information (say the serial number and customer name) into an algorithm that spits out the code. The code is then transmitted to the publisher’s central server to acknowledge that a legitimate copy is present on the user’s machine. Unfortunately, as with all codes, they are crackable. A downloader can look up so-called KeyGen cracks and break it so that it emulates a legit piece of software.

DeCSS for DVDs

CSS stands for Content Scrambling System, an encryption used for movie DVDs. Since 1999, DeCSS was created that breaks the CSS encryption and allows the reading of movie DVDs. Why is this significant? This feeds the belly of the Download Generation. Cracking the CSS code means that DVD quality movies can be downloaded over the net. In Lee’s case, she just has to download a free DVD movie player and she can watch the latest releases on DVD on her PC.

Apple iTunes

All is not lost however. Apple have announced that 1 billion legitimate songs have been downloaded worldwide through their online iTunes store. This shows that there is a market for people who want to legally download their songs. It is only a matter of time that DVD-quality movies, games and software become legitimately downloaded. Part of the reason why iTunes is so successful is that it easily integrates with Apple iPods. The other stems from the fact that Apple have developed their own Digital Rights Management tool that constrains the songs use. For example, users are not allowed unlimited CD burns of playlists, or to play the songs on more than five computers within 24 hours. However, they are allowed to copy the songs to an unlimited number of iPods (Source: WikiPedia). Apple’s Digital Rights Management makes it attractive as publishers have some level of control on the distribution of their music.

Conclusion

There are a number of ways that the download generation can consume, legitimately or otherwise, digital media. The key for content providers is to take a long term view and examine the fundamental trends that are occurring. Children who grew up with the Internet are now in the workforce and becoming more affluent and are more comfortable in paying for goods, services and content online. Remember the Internet is the cheapest global distribution channel to get your content to your customers. Protect yourself and your valuable IP as best you can but the global wave of the “Download Generation” is just too large to ignore.