Segwist

Sending files over the internet is a task that is spoiled for choice. No longer the domain of FTP and email accounts alone, there have emerged a wide range of options and technologies to get those bits and bytes from one end of the internet to the other. In recent years in particular, a handful of services have come to vie for the lead amongst an almost overwhelming selection of contenders. Much like “Google” went from a company name to a verb, the digital hordes are now making a household name out of Rapidshare, YouSendIt, Dropbox and Megaupload. It would appear that the popularity of each particular service is driven almost entirely out of established habits of certain communities, where an internet forum swapping DJ mixes might favour one service by virtue of precedent alone.

For example, Megaupload remains a popular choice despite not only the Flash animation advertising, but a Captcha password page and a countdown timer. There have been criticisms in the past that certain Megaupoad service add-ons contain elements of spyware, as well as a number of search sites that have emerged with the sole purpose of indexing the user files uploaded. The latter is an issue that has caught more than a few music producers off guard. As the creative arts are often the vanguard of file transfer services, countless artists have sent pre-releases, promo mixes and remix stems via Megaupload and Rapidshare without realising that their files are anything but invisible.

Illustrating this to a fellow music producer recently, we immediately stumbled across a zip file containing the audio files from a commercial release of theirs that they had sent to another producer to remix. It may not be uncommon to place a great deal of faith in the intentions and abilities of a service provider these days, but content developers and businesses need to start taking a greater interest in the security and character of the systems that they use.

If the site says your files are safe, then this must be a hoax. Right?

There are of course other ways to send files that avoid the third party commercial service. Despite such wonderfully vague announcements that the city of Los Angeles uses YouSendIt, businesses are still controlling their data through FTP or synchronisation and transfer services such as Dropbox, which operates by way of a program that copies all data saved into a special folder on the user’s system to a server, allowing those files to be controlled and shared specifically. There is a generous 2gig limit on the free version, although some may not like the requirement of a third party program to install to access the service. After all, there is something to be said about simply typing in a web address and clicking upload.

The good news is that there are some great alternatives emerging that are free of advertising, safe from remote indexing and refrain from annoying Captchas and waiting periods. One of the most notable of these, and my new personal favourite, is the Drop.io service. I first came across it while chatting about an article idea with the editor of Create Digital Music, who works across the river from the Drop.io offices which are based in Dumbo Brooklyn. Intrigued by the human element of what is otherwise a world inhabited by faceless data warehouses, I tried the service out and quickly became a fan. Visit the site and evaluate the service for yourself by all means, but it’s safe to say the privacy, ability to set expiry dates on your files or the entire account, lack of intrusive advertising and simplicity of the service are virtues in an age of almost “tacky” service providers.

The communication between Drop.io and Create Digital Music is by no means an accident, or anything other than a “heaps up”, but it should serve as a suitable frame of reference for the range of community that the service wishes to work with, and not against. Chatting with them recently about a login issue I was having (which, I will admit, turns out that I had forgotten that I had set an expiry date on one of my Drop.io accounts entirely!) we got to chatting about privacy. I was pleased that they confirmed that their service is “absolutely not” open to indexing and that “drops aren’t searchable and are completely private”.

Drop.io gives you powerful file transer without the spam

As to the greater world of file transfer in particular, there are simply more services and methodologies out there than one might attempt to round up of their own volition. With the existence of services such as Drop.io however, there is a clear alternative to the insecure, annoying, and costly services provided by the likes of Megaupload and Yousendit. There are undoubtedly even more to come. For the time being, a reminder to ask yourself what these companies are doing with your data, and why they aren’t protecting, it is surely a timely one. Unless you enjoy typing in codewords, clicking through pages of links, dodging banner advertising and having to wait for downloads to begin, there are better options. It’s time to start using them.

If you have any other suggestions, or if I’ve been unfairly harsh on the downside of the established players, let me know in the comments.

Tags: Captcha, Create Digital Music, Drop, Drop.io, Dropbox, File, FTP, Megaupload, Rapidshare, Transfer, Yousendit

This entry was posted on Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 1:58 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.