peer-to-peer on university internet
 

I got this message from my IT services today.. regarding use of peer-to-peer in residence


"
Dear All,

Please cease and desist any and all Peer to Peer sharing in residence effective immediately. ITS is receiving an inordinate amount of official warnings and take-down notices from various governmental bodies and software houses, warning us of the redistribution by students of licensed software and copyright materials. Students need to understand that the student residence network is visible across the Internet and that copyright bodies regularly seek out the sources of the redistribution of their materials.

I would remind everyone that tools such as Kazaa are quite simply classified as a virus. Sharing out your hard disk on your personal computer to the entire Internet is a very reckless thing to do, and will certainly result in your computer being used by other individuals to launch denial of service attacks. Your computer will certainly be abused by others if you do these things, yet you will bear the legal responsibility.

These activities are a breach of the Universities acceptable use policy and are a breach of both Australian and International law. There are very serious legal penalties that apply to persons who breach copyright laws. Each individual who engages in the sharing of these materials is separately liable for participating in the distribution of the copyright material.

Any persons who are sharing out copyrighted materials of any kind for general redistribution will have their network access privileges stopped immediately. Please be sensible, stop this activity at once.

You have now been officially warned.

Yours Sincerely,

"

So... what do you guys think. Scare tactics, or valid threat?

The threat itself is valid; a lot of campuses are getting letters from movie producers and music companies pissed because their students have movie and mp3s on kazaa. how do I know? I know three people PERSONALLY who were caught on their campus and were threatened PERSONALLY. one got caught by paramount, the other one was an anonymous producer who simply contacted the university, and the last was warner brothers.

the part about kazaa being a virus and how it can lead to D-O-S attacks is complete bullshit :)

I agree with Redjake - I know plenty of people who have received personal cease & desist orders.

Your best plan is to stay away from Kazaa/etc. - because your university IT staff can easily tell if you use it.

But yea, bullshit on the part about Kazaa being a virus [though several viruses do use kazaa].

This is why I like IRC....not user friendly but you don't have to share anything :)

Aside for that, everything else has been said I think. I had my connection turned off by my school for a few months because I was sharing a movie file.

p2p
 

bittorrent - all you need to know.

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... but if you need to have a traditional p2p, poisoned for mac os x is the best (and safest - will ignore malicious riaa and mpaa hosts)

Yea, I'm big on bittorrent too, but I'm not sure they'll appreciate me using so much upstream bandwidth.

if you're on campus, I doubt they will care. I also doubt it will slow anyone's connection down but yours. I'd let it be, let it be, let it be :)

Well, it depends on if they're on a hubbed or switched network - if it's hubbed, he'll be slowing the people around him. He'll also be using up outbound bandwidth that the university pays for.

Also, BitTorrent is not immune from prosecution, I know people who have received letters from Paramount and other organizations for downloading files through BitTorrent - so watch yourself.

what universities are on a hubbed network? ;) I thought most universities did away with that stuff in the past!

God, I'd hope so. Using an unintelligent device like a hub to connect an entire university would be completely undesirable. Messages being passed to every single person on campus, no thanks.

What about Kazaalite and Soulseek?

I don't mean that the entire university is hubbed, but rather that - for example - one dorm, or one floor of a dorm, is on a hub. Then there's a switch in the basement that the hubs connect to, and then the switch goes to the local router, etc. It's fairly common around here (Maryland).

/me sighs

No P2P programs are immune to detection. They all requre ports to be open and your IT department can see what ports are being used and by whom. Don't fool yourself into thinking switching to another protocol will be your salvation and solution.

that's interesting! here, you can download and upload all you want, and it never, ever slows down the connection.......it may slow down YOUR connection, but no one else is ever affected.

Private, IP restricted FTPs. Who needs to mess with all the packet shapers and firewalls and whatnot that university networks have slowing down or blocking P2P programs, when you can get all the newest stuff as fast as your internet connection can handle it :)

*cant wait to get off the dual T1's here at school being shared by 400 people, and go home to my 3Mbit cable :)*