Software has come along so that you are now able to download certain software from the internet. you can now download certain upgrades for software as the internet now allows you to either got to a website and download a digitised upgrade rather than buying it from a local computer shop. You can also download certain programmes for buisness or pleasure through freeware or purchase. If a programme has a glitch or an error you can now download patches to fix the issue quickly and save you from reinstalling the programme. With the internet, companies can now advertise downloads to draw customers to their site.software can also be used to inform you of any problems with the hardware. Music which is bought over the internet is now either sent in CD format posted to a person's home or more commonly, digitally sent. Music files bought over the internet are compressed to keep them small to save space on people's hard drives. The result in doing this means that the sound quality is usually much lower due to compression. The files in which they are often sent are in Apple's MP3 files. Microsoft have their own version called the Audio Video Interleave (AVI) which isn't used much compared to the MP3s. There is also MVI which is streaming music onto a disk. Streaming is when a file is slowly released which leads to better quality but longer waiting times.
Videos are also compressed and streamed.Streamed videos are often done in MPEG which allows the content to be released slowly due to load time but gives better picture quality. Websites such as Youtube use MPEGs and streaming to show videos.
Games can now be downloaded as either freeware or after purchasing it over the internet. Games can also be played with other people around the world via interactivity of multiplayer games. Single player games such as Broken Sword 2.5 are classed as freeware and can be downloaded for free and can be plaed by yourself at home. Games such as World of Warcraft are played over the internet and players can interact with others from around the world. Both are ways the internet have revolutionised the entertainment buisness.Books now are able to be read (with the author's permission) wholly on the Internet and also can be published electronically as "e-books". Devices such as Amazon Kindle, iLiad, Personal Digital Assistant and the 100 Classic Book Collection for the Nintedo DS are a few examples of e-book readers that allow you to read a book electronically rather than physically. Websites such as Google Books allow you to either read part of or all of certain books depending on certain copyright restrictions. Many E-books are regulated under DRM (digital rights management) which limits what you can legally do with it opposed to a real book due to the possibility of illegal copying and sharing.
The internet now allows you to watch live and recorded television via your computer. Many TV channels have their own dedicated internet players to allow people to catch up on somethng they've missed on TV. All of the online TV viewers usually work on a streamed basis which means that the programme will be slowly sent to you when you need to view it. The major TV channel's players are the BBC iplayer, ITVplayer and 4 on Demand. All these allow people to view programmes when they want within an allotted time (usually a week) under certain copyright allowanced and the DRM. Despite the iplayer stating you need a TV licence to use it, the other channels leave it open to use by anyone who may not even have or need a Television set due to that they can forcibly run adverts on it while the BBC can't. This leads to the advantage that in future people won't need a Television and therefore no longer have to pay TV Licence fees.
With Televison on the internet, you also have the ability to listen to live and listen again to recorded radio. The broadcasts can be digitised so it can be sent to you over the internet. As well as TV, radio is under DRM. Websites can offer you to download Podcasts which are downloadable audio files.Websites such as Spotify and other online radio stations give you the ability to listen to internet-only radio stations which are not on normal radiowaves.
As a result of all this dowloadable content around there is now plenty of easy ground for piracy to become rife. There are many websites around such as Pirate Bay and Limewire which allow you to illegally download certain entertainment media which often consist of copyrighted matiral. The result is that some people may not even realise they have downloaded something illegally as many piracy sites look legitamate but do not mention that if people download pirated matirial, then they violate DRM and/or DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act). This idea of using the internet for piracy came from in the early days of the internet it was an easy way to share information from gentlemens special interest websites and magazines and has grown from that as the internet developed and the original piracy is still going strong despite attempts to crack down on it.
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