Social Media

For the industry, sharing of files has become a serious problem for profits.  Having as many possible copies as you want of the same song or movie is an side-effect of digitizing certain products.  And unfortunately for the industry, this has come with certain standards.  People want to be able to have as many versions of their own Mp3s as they want, or to be able to share these things with their friends.  And that also has a function in advertising.  Companies will want people to be able to share via word-of-mouth, and places like Youtube or file sharing sites do drive up interest.  They just also make it laughably easy to never have to pay for the music the user is interested in.  So, there comes a need for a new solution to these problems.

First solution would be to make the files computer locked.  Apple already does this through their iTunes program.  To play your songs, you have to give access via your username and password, and you can only give access to five computers/accounts.  This allows for low level sharing, and also creates a prioritizing of how it's shared - you won't send the file off without thinking, because you need to make sure you have access on all your possible platforms too.  However, this does irritate customers, and cause confusion among them.  The ability to track who is using a file is limited by how the computers are labeled (or not) when the process is set up, and so a lot of times, this way ended up choosing between random computer names or IP addresses and hoping you hadn't locked yourself out of your own files.  It also doesn't prevent Youtube uploading or the like.

Second solution would be to disable sharing all together.  This would obviously be deeply upsetting to consumers, who want to share even between their own devices, which might use different accounts for a variety of reasons, and would at least initially leave a bad impression of the company.  However, it would be one of the most effective ways at completely shutting down piracy.

The third solution would be to ad advertising onto the product.  This would also be seen negatively, but it would turn the piracy into something of a positive.  Even if the song itself is shared multiple times, the 15 second ad spot in front of the advertisement would at least allow for the company to remind consumers to buy the song themselves if they can, and to like the band or production company promote themselves.

Privacy

The basis of this article was the balance between privacy and the convince that comes from customization.  Do we care more about being treated like individuals and having our needs catered to for the best experience, or do we want to protect our privacy more.  It also takes specific looks into how companies use that information, both on the site itself, for itself, or how they give it out to other companies.  Sometimes, these privacy issues can be something as simple as cookies to help navigate or remember your settings better - and this includes something as simple as remembering what links you've already navigated, to change the colors, which is now standard fare, to remembering your password for you when you return, and all the way up to remembering your specific credit card information and address for shipping purposes.

Not only is it a problem that these companies have this information, it is compounded by the fact that they don't keep it to themselves.  Sometimes this can be like the PSN, where the information was hacked from a substandard security system, or it can be wholesale exchange of personal information for money.

In the end, it is on the consumer to decide their personal level of comfort with this system.  For some, it doesn't matter much.  Amazon and Google probably have detailed and private information on nations worth of people, but we trust them to keep it safe, while other websites, from giants like Facebook to the small, poorly designed sites that don't seem trustworthy, are far more personal decisions.

Question of the day: Have you changed your opinion on how much you protect your privacy on the internet?  Once upon a time, I didn't even want to use my real name on a website, much less enter my address and card information.  Now I don't think twice about it in a lot of cases (unless, obviously, I'm not purchasing anything.  Then it becomes suspect).  Has anyone become less cautious, like I have, or have you become more so?