Steal This File Sharing Book: What They Wont Tell You About File Sharing

Many people trade photos on the Internet, whether they are porn, celebrity photos, art, or any other static visual medium. Unlike other media, photos and clip art usually come stored in one of three widely accepted formats: JPEG, GIF, or PNG. The JPEG format uses lossy compression, which means it physically removes data to reduce the file size. The GIF and PNG formats use lossless compression, which means they don’t remove data to compress a file’s size.

JPEG

Usual contents: Photos, art

Copy protection: None

Official website: http://www.jpeg.org

Programs used: Nearly every graphics program and web browser

Developed in the early 1980s by the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) as a lossy way for compressing photographs, JPEG is the most common method of storing photographs on the Internet. Although the JPEG format was created as a license-free compression method, a company called Forgent announced in 2002 that it held the patents and would charge licensing fees. The JPEG group soon announced JPEG 2000, a replacement technology, but JPEG remains widely used, and this is likely to remain the case until the patent case is settled in court.

GIF

Usual contents: Clip art, line drawings

Copy protection: None

Official website: None

Programs used: Nearly every graphics program and web browser

Introduced by CompuServe in the late 1980s, GIF files usually contain clip art and any type of images that aren’t photographs. Although the GIF format is limited to 256 colors, it does offer the ability to create simple animation. Unisys claimed ownership of the format and began charging royalties in the 1990s, leading to the creation of the PNG format. Unisys’s patents have since expired in the United States and will expire shortly worldwide.

PNG

Usual contents: Clip art, line drawings

Copy protection: None

Official website: http://www.libpng.org/pub/png

Programs used: Most graphics programs and Web browsers

The PNG (Portable Network Graphics) format was created as an open source, patent-free alternative to GIF, and it has attracted growing support. It has yet to reach the popularity of the more ingrained JPEG and GIF formats, however, and with Unisys’s patents on the GIF image format expiring, it’s unlikely that the PNG format will ever replace the GIF format.