File Sharing

The emerging of cloud file sharing systems has been motivated by real user needs for data sharing. There are many solutions providing such sharing support all having the common goal of being widely scalable while providing users with consistent shared data. However, offering consistent data is at odds with scalability as it requires many messages and available network bandwith for file transfer.

This essay expands upon an earlier work (Grodzinsky and Tavani, 2005) in which we analyzed the implications of the Verizon v RIAA case for P2P Networks vis-à-vis concerns affecting personal privacy and intellectual property. In the present essay we revisit some of the concerns surrounding this case by analyzing the intellectual property and privacy issues that emerged in the MGM Studios v. Grokster case. These two cases illustrate some of the key tensions that exist between privacy and property interests in cyberspace. In our analysis, we contrast Digital Rights Management (DRM) and Interoperability and we examine some newer distribution models of sharing over P2P networks. We also analyze some privacy implications in the two cases in light of the theory of privacy as contextual integrity (Nissenbaum, 2004).

The novelty of the peer-to-peer (P2P) paradigm relies on two main concepts: cooperation among users and resource sharing. There are many applications based on peer-to-peer paradigm, but the most popular one is the file sharing. We can classify the file sharing application into centralized systems, (having a central server), and decentralized systems. Another classification would be structured and unstructured systems,

With the rise of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing applications there has been an increasing interest in understanding the popularity and use of P2P. In this study, we look at P2P use on the University of Southern California’s campus network throughout a 14-hour period. We quantify the volume of traffic from P2P activity as well as the number of campus hosts involved in P2P at USC. Since port-matching techniques often fail for P2P applications, we estimate traffic based on both port-based and connection-pattern based techniques. We do not have access to packet data and so these measures provide only bounds on P2P traffic. In addition, while we identify P2P sharing, we cannot comment the types of data being shared (either music or data, restricted or freely available). We find that 3–13% of active hosts on campus participate in P2P, and that this traffic accounts for 21–33% of the bytes transferred to and from our campus.

The headway towards the outstanding future can be realized with the productive cooperation among peoples and organizations. The productive cooperation has high demands for providing reliable and efficient information and function sharing. For achieving these requirements we propose an Autonomous community (AC) concept. AC is a group of autonomous members, in which each member has his own objectives, complies with the community obligations and has to be mutually cooperative with the others for achieving his own objectives. For achieving high reliable communication among community members we proposed a community communication technique based on one-to-many (1->N). This technique is characterized by by-productivity

Abstract: This contribution seeks to identify the short and long-term economic and cultural effects of file sharing on music, films and games, while taking into account the legal context and policy developments. The short-term implications examined concern direct costs and ...

The finding by Maier et al. [1] that Network News Transport Protocol (NNTP) traffic is responsible for up to 5 % of residential network traffic inspires us to revisit today's Usenet usage. For this purpose we have developed an NNTP analyzer for the Bro network intrusion detection system. We find that NNTP is intensively used by a small fraction of the residential broadband lines that we study and that almost all traffic is to NNTP servers that require subscription for a monthly fee. The accessed content resembles what one might expect from file-sharing systemsarchives and multimedia files. Accordingly, it appears that NNTP is used by some as a high performance alternative to traditional P2P file-sharing options such as eDonkey or BitTorrent.

Regarding efficiency, efficacy and incentive, free-sharing online (of recordings, live broadcasts , software and published works) outperforms market and property systems by reducing costs of production and distribution, increasing quality and access and better promoting creativity. Free-sharing online emerged within " global network capitalism " and non-capitalist networks. Free-sharing of purely informational content online challenges capitalism by eliminating scarcity. However, post-scarcity is limited by constraints on time and the capacity to filter digital plenitude. These limits create scope for alternative business models. Free-sharing online tempers capitalism's " tragedy of the anticommons ". However, to date, post-scarcity remains incomplete.

Flexibility and efficiency are the prime requirements for any P2P search mechanism. Existing P2P systems do not seem to provide satisfactory solution for achieving these two conflicting goals. Unstructured search protocols (as adopted in Gnutella and FastTrack), provide search flexibility but exhibit poor performance characteristics. Structured search techniques (mostly Distributed Hash DHT)-based), on the other hand, can efficiently route queries to target peers but support exactmatch queries only. In this paper we present a novel P2P system, called Distributed Pattern Matching System (DPMS), for enabling flexible and efficient search.

Since P2P file-sharing networks became extremely popular between Internet users, many researchers have tried to model those P2P networks. This article deals with the modeling of public domain P2P filesharing networks in terms of some parameters such as their number of users and the number of files inside them along the time. To do so, we have been measuring five public P2P file-sharing networks (Gnutella, FastTrack, Opennap, Edonkey and MP2P) tracking their evolution for three years. The results will be discussed and compared with measurements taken from other authors. Results obtained could be used to design new P2P networks, to test their performance or to optimize P2P network's parameters. 2.2. Number of users and files inside the P2P networks

A lot of attention has recently been focused oti Peer-topeer file sharing systems. Cniitella is CI fully distribiited peer-to-peer protocol, without the need for N central entity. This increcises the reliability of the system by uvoicfitig ci single point of failure as well making it more immune to legal attack. The two main featiires of the Gnutella protocol, discoven of peers and searching for files are implemented by passing diflerent ypes of messages behveeri the nodes of the Gtiiitella overlay network. Due to its fully distribiited nature, Gnittella relies on flooding to route most of these messages, which immediately raises the question of cost and scalabiliu. I n this paper, we study these aspects of the Gniitelki protocol by niecins of sitnulation, also considering the injluence of the topology ofthe Gnutella network.

Recording industry revenue has fallen sharply in the last three years, and some but not all observers attribute this to file sharing. We collect new data on albums obtained via purchase and downloading, as well as the consumers'' valuations of these albums, among a sample of US college students in 2003. We provide new estimates of sales displacement induced by downloading using both OLS and an instrumental variables approach using access to broadband as a source of exogenous variation in downloading. Each album download reduces purchases by about 0.2 in our sample, although possibly much more. Our valuation data allow us to measure the effects of downloading on welfare as well as expenditure in a subsample of Penn undergraduates, and we find that downloading reduces their per capita expenditure (on hit albums released 1999-2003) from $126 to $100 but raises per capita consumer welfare by $70.

We introduce HAIL (High-Availability and Integrity Layer), a distributed cryptographic system that permits a set of servers to prove to a client that a stored file is intact and retrievable. HAIL strengthens, formally unifies, and streamlines distinct approaches from the cryptographic and distributed-systems communities. Proofs in HAIL are efficiently computable by servers and highly compacttypically tens or hundreds of bytes, irrespective of file size. HAIL cryptographically verifies and reactively reallocates file shares. It is robust against an active, mobile adversary, i.e., one that may progressively corrupt the full set of servers. We propose a strong, formal adversarial model for HAIL, and rigorous analysis and parameter choices. We show how HAIL improves on the security and efficiency of existing tools, like Proofs of Retrievability (PORs) deployed on individual servers. We also report on a prototype implementation.

L'Enciclopedia Informatica tratta centinaia di argomenti in maniera semplice e chiara in modo tale che possa essere consultate sia dal neofita sia dal professionista. Acronimi, sigle, gergo tutto è spiegato senza mai dare per scontato che il lettore conosca il significato. La versione ebook ha il suo punto di forza nella possibilità di spostarsi da un argomento all'altro senza dover sfogliare centinaia di pagine. Un sistema ipertestuale dettagliato permette di andare all'argomento e tornare agli indice in un secondo. L'opera è stata pensata e indirizzata per l'uso da parte degli studenti, degli insegnanti e dei ricercatori scientifici di ogni ordine e grado.
Link anteprima gratuita:  https://www.amazon.it/dp/B08ZNKS76H

In this work, my LLM thesis submitted at the University of Lisbon - Law Faculty, I tried to summarize the mains issues and to offer some alternatives concerning to the relation between the peer-to-peer file-sharing and the authors' rights, within the national, European and Internacional scope.

We investigate the entrepreneurial opportunities and ethical dilemmas presented by technological turbulence. More specifically we investigate the line between productive and unproductive (i.e. illegal or unethical) entrepreneurship through three examples of Internet innovation-spam, music file sharing, and Internet pharmacies.

Si sta attualmente assistendo ad un'evoluzione delle preferenze dei consumatori e ad una progressiva sostituzione dei supporti, dal "digitale classico" del CD, al "digitale informatico" dei file musicali (MP3 ed altri). Appare necessario per i produttori e gli artisti tenere conto di tale tendenza, alla luce dei numerosi vantaggi in termini di riduzione dei costi e accesso a nuovi e più vasti mercati. Allo stesso modo dovrebbero adeguarsi la disciplina giuridica sulla tutela della proprietà intellettuale e la scienza economica di riferimento. In particolare dovrebbe essere attenuata la netta separazione che nei modelli economici "tradizionali" veniva fatta fra supporto "classico", legale, e file musicale o file sharing, illegali. Considerando l'enorme successo dei siti legali di vendita di musica on line, si dovrebbe rivedere l'importanza relativa attribuita ai costi opportunità associati all'acquisto di un album su CD o su MP3.
La strategia ottimale non è dunque quella di "reprimere" la diffusione della musica in rete, ma di assecondarne lo sviluppo e di gestirne le possibilità di profitto, con la consapevolezza che in un'ipotetica situazione "a regime" il file musicale diverrà il principale supporto di ascolto e fruizione della musica.
This article investigates recent developments in legal and technological protection of digital music and describes the on-going process of format substitution (from CD to MP3 mainly), as well as consumers' attitude toward music downloads. Record companies, artists and producers should consider this changing in the environment; economic theory and intellectual property law should do the same. The 'traditional' separation between 'concrete' format (legal) and 'digital' format (illegal) in the economic literature, as well as the associated opportunity costs, has to be rethought. Knowing that the MP3 is going to become the most common musical format in the near future, producers' optimal strategy will be not to constrain the pro- liferation of music on the net. Taking into account of cost reduction opportunities in terms of promotion, distribution and network effect, the recording industry has to be ready to internalize the benefits of this technological innovation instead.

Sudahkah Bapak/Ibu memiliki contoh Notulen Rapat Orang Tua Siswa penerimaan siswa baru? Pada kesempatan yang berbahagia ini seiring dengan berakhirnya kegiatan tahunan UN, US dan USBN yang telah diselenggarakan pada bulan Maret hingga Mei kemarin, tiba saatnya untuk membagikan evaluasi hasil belajar siswa/siswi kepada para wali murid. Tentunya akan ada agenda khusus yang perlu dijadwalkan dalam rangka pembagian hasil belajar atau raport kepada wali murid. contoh notulen rapat wali murid merupakan agenda khusus tersebut merupakan agenda yang dibuat secara khusus untuk pertemuan antara guru dan wali murid pada hari yang direncanakan dan tentunya harus menggunakan undangan resmi. Maka dari itu, pada postingan ini gurubidang.com akan membagikan contoh Notulen Rapat Orang Tua Siswa yang bisa Bapak/Ibu gunakan sebagai susunan kegiatan pertemuan kepada para wali murid dalam rangka pembahasan hasil evaluasi belajar dan ramah tamah. Jika pada postingan sebelumnya kami membagikan surat undangan, berita acara, dan daftar hadir, pada postingan kali ini kami khususkan untuk Bapak/Ibu format susunan kegiatan rapat dalam bentuk notulen. Notulen Rapat yang akan Bapak/Ibu unduh ini bisa juga disebut sebagai contoh notulen rapat awal tahun pelajaran dan diartikan sebagai sebuah ringkasan tentang alur jalannya rapat dari awal sampai akhir

Il testo in lingua originale è disponibile all'indirizzo http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt Questa è una traduzione non ufficiale in italiano della GNU General Public License. Questa traduzione non è stata pubblicata dalla Free Software Foundation, e non stabilisce i termini legali di distribuzione del software che usa la GNU GPL -Soltanto la versione originale in inglese della GNU GPL fa ciò.

Perkembangan teknologi komputer meningkat dengan cepat, hal ini terlihat pada era tahun 80-an jaringan komputer masih merupakan teka-teki yang ingin dijawab oleh kalangan akademisi, dan pada tahun 1988 jaringan komputer mulai digunakan di universitas-universitas, perusahaan-perusahaan dan instansi-instansi pemerintahan. CV. Karya Mitra Utama melaksanakan kegiatan konsultan berupa pembuatan dokumen penawaran dan laporan proyek. Dalam melaksanakan kegiatan tersebut CV. Karya Mitra Utama sudah membangun jaringan lokal (LAN) dan memiliki jaringan internet namun LAN yang ada sangat lambat dalam menyalin data dan jaringan internet sangat lambat dalam mengunduh data, kedua jaringan tersebut juga sering sekali mengalami gangguan, sehingga dalam keadaan tertentu sering menimbulkan masalah.
Maka sebagai solusi dari masalah tersebut, penulis melaksanakan penelitian merancang dan membangun jaringan lokal di CV. Karya Mitra Utama menggunakan topologi star, penelitian dimulai dengan Perancangan jaringan, pengaturan peralatan jaringan komputer hingga pengelolaan LAN. Setelah dilaksanakan penelitian diperoleh kesimpulan dengan dibangunnya jaringan lokal membantu memudahkan pekerjaan karyawan dalam proses pembuatan dokumen penawaran dan laporan. Pelaksanaan penelitian ini menghasilkan jaringan lokal dan jaringan internet yang jauh lebih baik dan handal dari jaringan sebelumnya. Selain itu penulis mendapatkan pengetahuan, pengalaman, serta teknik mengenai merancang dan membangun LAN.

Il testo, coordinato dall’Avv. Fulvio Sarzana,  è firmato da quindici autori appartenenti al mondo del giornalismo, delle imprese, della ricerca universitaria, delle libere professioni, del consumerismo, tra i quali si segnalano Marco Scialdone, Paolo Brini, Luca Nicotra, Marco Pierani, Mauro Vergari, Stefano Quintarelli, Luca Annunziata, Gaia Bottà, Mauro Alovisio, Dino Bortolotto, Giovan Battista Frontera, Giulia Aranguena de la Paz, Centro Studi Informatica Giuridica Torino, Fabrizio Ventriglia,  e affronta il tema del copyright  da un punto di vista sino ad ora inesplorato, indicando studi internazionali su copyright e libertà di espressione, ricerche indipendenti, dati a sostegno dei diritti fondamentali in internet, esperienze giuridiche e sociali di convivenza tra tutela del diritto d’autore e libertà di espressione, e analizza anche le recenti iniziative dell’Autorità per le garanzie nelle comunicazioni in tema di diritti d’autore.

Ort: das Internet. Zeit: 1998-2008. Über zehn Jahre hinweg schrieb gulli.com die Internet-, Netzkultur- und Rechtsgeschichte mit. Neben dem Wandel des Internet zum Massenmedium, Dotcomboom und Abmahnwahn, dem Aufkommen der Blogs, dem Niedergang der Musikindustrie und vieler anderer vermeintlicher und realer Internetrevolutionen wurde eine kleine Seite zu einer der Top50-Sites im deutschsprachigen Netz. Die Geschichte von gulli.com und einigen Leuten dahinter.

A CIBERCULTURA E SEU ESPELHO
Campo de conhecimento emergente e
nova vivência humana na era da imersão interativa

Eugênio Trivinho
Edilson Cazeloto
(Organizadores)

Textos de:
Adriana Amaral
André Lemos
Edilson Cazeloto
Elizabeth Saad Corrêa
Eugênio Trivinho
Gilbertto Prado
Juremir Machado da Silva
Lucia Santaella
Lucrécia D’Alessio Ferrara
Marco Silva
Maria Cristina Franco Ferraz
Othon Jambeiro
Yara Rondon Guasque Araujo

Esta tese tem como principal objetivo ajudar a preencher o défice de pesquisa teórico-empírica com origem nos países lusófonos em torno do confronto aparente entre os direitos dos utilizadores de Internet e a aplicação dos direitos de propriedade intelectual. Recorrendo a um olhar interdisciplinar (comunicacional, sociológico, económico e jurídico), visa colocar em relevo o novo papel dos utilizadores de obras culturais enquanto distribuidores proporcionado pelas plataformas informais paralelas aos circuitos legais de distribuição.

A primeira parte, de cariz teórico, inicia-se com uma genealogia histórica dos conceitos de pirataria, direito de autor, copyright e propriedade intelectual para prosseguir com uma exposição dos fundamentos para uma crítica da economia política da informação, seguindo-se um retrato da evolução tecnológica e comercial da partilha de ficheiros ao longo da última década e meia. Quase a terminar, encontra-se um resumo da literatura mais relevante sobre a relação entre vendas e cópias não autorizadas de bens informacionais, assim como uma apresentação dos principais resultados de centenas de estudos quantitativos incidindo nos comportamentos dos utilizadores e nas motivações que os levam a descarregar obras protegidas por direitos de autor. Por fim, procede-se a uma análise comparativa de um conjunto de indicadores estatísticos relativos aos níveis de penetração das TICs em Portugal e no Brasil e às atividades online dos utilizadores de Internet de ambos os países.

A segunda parte consiste numa análise empírica dos comportamentos e perceções dos utilizadores portugueses e brasileiros de redes peer-to-peer (P2P) e sites que permitem efetuar cópias não autorizadas de obras protegidas por direitos de autor. Para tal, irei socorrer-me das respostas de 301 indivíduos de ambas as nacionalidades a um inquérito online bem como nas declarações posteriores de 16 desses inquiridos recolhidas por entrevista online.

Com esta pesquisa pretende-se demonstrar que, longe de ser uma mera falha de mercado, a partilha é antes uma dimensão fundamental da cultura (Aigrain 2011). Visto deste prisma, as limitações da perspetiva economicista da contabilização dos eventuais prejuízos tornam-se evidentes.

P2P Culture: A comparative sociological analysis of sites and networks for online sharing of music, movies and ebooks in Portugal and Brazil

Abstract: This thesis has for its main goal to help fill the gap of theoretical and empirical research originating from Portuguese-speaking countries concerning the apparent clash between the rights of Internet users and the enforcement of intellectual property laws. By way of an interdisciplinary lens gathering contributions from communication science, sociology, economics and law, it intends to shed light on the new role of users of cultural works as distributors – a role amplified by informal platforms parallel to formal distribution circuits.

The first part, of a theoretical nature, starts with a historical genealogy of concepts such as piracy, copyright, droit d’auteur and intellectual property, followed by a presentation of the technological and commercial evolution of file sharing over the past decade and a half.
Next comes an overview of the most relevant literature on the relationship between sales and unauthorized copies of information goods, as well as a synthesis of the main results of hundreds of quantitative studies covering the behaviors of file-sharers and their motives for downloading copyrighted works. Finally, this part ends with a comparative analysis of a set of statistical indicators regarding the penetration levels of ICTs in Portugal and Brazil as well as on the most popular online activities of Internet users in both countries.

The second part comprises an empirical analysis of the behaviors and perceptions of Portuguese and Brazilian users of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks and sites enabling the unauthorized copying of copyrighted works. The analysis will be based on the answers of 301 individuals of both nationalities to an online survey, as well as on the subsequent statements made by 16 of these respondents in the context of a series of online interviews.

With this research, it is my aim to show that, rather than being only a market failure, sharing is instead a fundamental dimension of culture (Aigrain 2011) Seen in this light, the constraints of an economic perspective exclusively aimed at measuring any possible losses become evident.

Abstract:

Samba merupakan aplikasi Unix yang memanfaatkan protokol SMB (ServerMessage Block). Sebagian sistem operasi memanfaatkan SMB dalam komunikasi client-server-nya, termasuk Windows dan OS/2. Samba memungkinkan mesinLinux berkomunikasi dengan mesin Windows/Dos mapupun OS/2. Samba dapatdigunakan untuk :
- Berbagi (share) file dan printer pada semua komputer yang terhubung ke jaringan.
- Client unix/Linux bisa mengakses file system windows
- Client windows bisa mengakses file system Linux dan sebaliknya
- Mengintegrasikan authentikasi antara linux dan Windows ke dalam suatu domain pada suatu jaringan.
- Menempatkan mesin Unix (Linux) sebagai Primary Domain Controller sebagaimana yang dilakukan Windows NT / 2000 server.

Distribution of content, such as music, remains one of the main drivers of P2P development. Subscription-based services are currently receiving a lot of attention from the content industry as a viable business model for P2P content distribution. One of the main problems that such services face is that users may choose to redistribute content outside the community of subscribers, thereby facilitating large-scale piracy. Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems typically employ tamper resistance techniques to control this risk. We propose a system architecture that uses economic incentives instead of tamper resistance to motivate users to keep the content within the subscription community. The key technical contribution we make is to integrate a P2P file sharing service with an escrow service that reliably "pays" the party that is serving up the content. The payment itself can be realized in a number of ways, using "actual" money or bonus points such as frequent flyer miles.

In most of today's campus-like learning settings, students are frequently confronted with e-learning systems that do not only deliver and display learning content, but are equipped with a number of integrated tools for file sharing, communication, personalisation (personal annotations, text marking, etc) and cooperation. However, recent observations show that these functions are rarely used. One reason for not using the technological opportunities for informal communication and interaction is the poor design of such ...

Peer-to-peer systems (P2P) have become a popular technique to architect decentralized systems. However, despite its popularity most P2P systems consist in simple applications such as file sharing or chat systems. The main reason is that more complex applications require levels of consistency that nowadays are not offered by P2P systems. In this paper, we explore how to provide consistency based on distributed mutual exclusion via quorum systems in DHTbased P2P networks. Our results show that quorum systems applied directly to such networks are not scalable due to the high traffic imposed onto the underlying network. The paper introduces some design principles for both quorum systems and protocols using them that help to boost their performance. These design principles consist in dynamic and decentralized selection of quorums and in the exposition and exploitation of internals of the DHT such as the finger table. We show that by combining both design principles it is possible to minimize the number of visited sites and the latency needed to obtain a quorum.

The decade that goes from the end of the Napster's era (first P2P network closed by US authorities, in 2001) and the fall of MegaUpload (world network of file sharing closed in 2012 by the New Zealand authorities) is characterized by the progressive decline of the technological barriers relating to home video downloading practices. However, few studies focuses on illegal downloading practices considering it as the reflect of a changing behavior and consumption of film audiences. This article attempts to describe the file sharing experience observed during nearly ten years on the online non-official video market. This paper puts forth the hypothesis of a growing disagreement with the basic commercial online video offers, by ordinary film viewers, which are increasingly informed and experts in cinema rarities. Based on the results of a qualitative survey conducted among file sharing users, we show that the downloading and streaming remain practices strongly correlated with the profane knowledge of film consumers and the new trend of the niche cinephilia.

Keywords : movies, Internet, film viewers, ordinary experts, file sharing practices, streaming, niche cinephilia, rarity.

GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) can be defined as a moving image characterized by brevity, repetition (loop) and an apparently low informative content; used as a pseudo-linguistic element, GIF is able to re-mediate a pre-existing text and to resemanticize it. In the first place, the image originates from a process of decontextualization of an audiovisual element, quoting or referring to the original audiovisual text itself (Uhlin) – which can be taken from several media: television, cinema, video art, home made. The audiovisual fragment is then assigned with a new specific meaning, when it is used for a communicative purpose (especially on the Social Networks), acting as a container of variable informations generally designated to substitute articulate colloquial elements both emotional or explanatory (Huber).

GIF acts as the summation of the discourses about intermediality of cinema which, hybridizing with other media, as it happens for the audiovisual fragments stolen by a user with the purpose of assigning new meanings in an online conversation, changes its narrative function and becomes part of a more extended “storytelling” which is not played by finctional characters anymore, but by real actors (the users) using the original medium with new goals. From this perspective, GIFs could be seen as a new form of what Guy Debord called détorunement, that is to say «the re-use of pre-existing artistic elements in a new ensemble», where the extracted fragment looses its own importance to be part of a new significant whole. The GIF follows the dètournement’s fundamental rule that is «the loss of importance of each detourned autonomous element – which may go so far as to completely lose its original sense – and at the same time the organization of another meaningful ensemble that confers on each element its new scope and effect». In Debord ‘s words «leaving the imbeciles to their slavish reference to “citations”», we may think at GIF as what Maria Rosaria Dagostino instead calls ‘cit-action’, defining it as «an active crossreference for the construction of a new sense», which applies independently from the origin of the raw material. Even when the frame is taken from a real life event – and not from audiovisual materials – we must rethink that excerpt as it was taken from a storytelling, which is longer then a TV episode or a movie since it refers to defined characters (the individuals) inside a context (their lives). Extrapolating and detouring frames from the real life, GIFs realize what the Situationists called ‘ultra-détournement’, that is, as Guy Debord and Gil J Wolman argued, «the tendencies for détournement to operate in everyday social life», where to gestures and words are given other meanings.

Then, independently from the origin of the detourned material, whether it comes from an audiovisual text or a real-life event, the emotional load is subjected to the détournement as much as the narrative and iconographic content. Notwithstanding, in some respect, especially speaking about carrying emotions, GIFs seem to exceed the détournement. In fact, when they pass from being part of a continuum (fictional or actual) to being a GIF properly defined, emotions are detoured indeed, but also re-mediated. In every remediation, the content, even the emotional one, adapts itself according to the features of the arrival medium: in the case of GIFs, it gains the brevity, circularity and the being an object in its own right typical of the looped structure. Therefore, the emotional load, remediated by the medium ‘GIF’, achieves rarefaction, abstracting itself from the emotions of the originally previous and following frames, so becoming expressive on its own. Taking into account these transformations, that is to say the passage of the frames from being emotionally dependent from the original context to the completely independence, GIFs seems to negate the rule according to which, as stated by Debord and Wolman, «the main impact of a détournement is directly related to the conscious or semiconscious recollection of the original contexts of the elements». In fact, it is quite obvious that GIFs have an intense affective power even without this recollection. Then, GIFs are able to state a perfectly eligible emotion, independently from the images’ origin, recognisability and relevance. This is what makes GIF possibly definable as a para- or pseudo-linguistic element by itself.

As a new linguistic element, GIF exemplifies the vast set of possibilities which transform the consuming user into a productive one, able to create new meanings in a socio-cultural context founded on the operation of remix (Lessig). The same audivisual quality (Mittell) – both of movies and TV series – seems nowadays influenced by the possibility (or need) to re-use the original product, giving us the chance to examine a new paradigm that, in this conribution, we can define as GIF culture, or the tendency to evaluate the movie product by the quantity and quality of its possible re-use in other communication contexts.

Through the analysis of the possible uses of GIF online – which exemplifies the actual concept of post-truth, meant as re-definition of the priorities of authenticity and veracity –, the contribution to this book aims to identify also the motions and the peculiar linguistic and communicative properties of this relatively new object, mostly collecting cases within specific social network platforms (Twitter, Facebook).

The process of decontextualization, followed by the appropriation of a fragment with the possible purpose of giving it a new meaning, implies three different problems:
    • Authenticity and copyright questions, connected to the use of owned material or creative products that are characterized by having a specific purpose in a different context; a fact which leads back to the concept of remix, as it was proposed by Lawrence Lessig, and to a new cultural paradigm in which the ownership of creative contents are always more considered, or perceived, as a public good (Pescatore). A condition which reminds the paradigmatic metaphor of piracy and the difficult possibility to define what is a pirate or a hacker in the contemporary social and economic landscape (Larsson, Svensson, de Kaminski, Crisp, Lobato).
    • Authoriality which, similarly to the previous problem, is menaced by the remixed content. Who is the real author of a GIF once it is used for a different purpose by a user? What is its aesthetic value? How the reference to the original author can define the purpose in the use of the GIF in a communicative social network context?
    • Post-truth and loss of creative original contents, that are now scattered in communicative online waves, becoming always less detectable as original, owned and true since they are not used anymore for the purposes they were created for. The informational part of the message is lost in favor of emotional or impulsive scopes.

The chapter will focus on the analysis of GIF, in a first moment as a singular element, developping a real description of the element in all of its characteristics: brevity, loop, composition, derivations, creation – with a specific focus on the platforms and services supplied for the extrapolation of frames or for the conversion of other file formats into GIF.
In a second moment the focus will be more specifically the capability of this element to refer to other texts, summarily identifiable in the cinema production, television programming and series, amateur footage, online reachable contents and works of art or with aesthetic aim. All of these sources operate in the long term, defining the possible purpose in the use of the GIF element.
The third part will focus on the communication aspect; GIF can actually be seen as a cross-tool:
    • an artistic format,
    • an informational or educational tool,
    • a communication or linguistic element.
Basing the discussion on the possible reference to the deriving text, GIF can also be considered and defined as
    • quoting GIF, if the message which is delivered through this element is directly referred to the original audiovisual text;
    • sensation, or reaction (Huber), or even détourning (Debord) GIF, if it derives from a process of de-authorialization and de-contextualization of the content from the original context. The fragment is actually stolen from the text with the aim of re-using it, giving it a new significance (re-semantization) with a communicative purpose of emotions or meanings;
    • cit-action (Dagostino) or community GIF, as soos as the re-semantization of the fragment brings to the individual and not expected recognition, by the interlocutors, of the original text or context, bringing to the possible creation of a community of intents, made of people who recognize themselves following the shared knowledge of the referred text or context.

Through this description of the GIF element and of its use in a communicative online context, the chapter will try to clarify, through a common social network practice, some of the most weighty questions of the contemporaneity, founding in this simple communicative element e point of intersection of different sets of social, politics and economic problems. GIF culture appears as the behavioral crossroad of contemporaneity, both in terms of re-use of creative contents and of demysification of current facts.