Solutions for University File Sharing? 77
bbulzibar asks: "Indiana University, like many other Universities, is struggling to deal with P2P file sharing. At a recent meeting, faculty, staff, and administration were convinced that 'the University is going to have to take some sort of action in the future [to eliminate illegal activity on the university's network].' With no student input, I can only imagine the worst happening (limiting data transfer, suing students, taking funds out of the student technology fee). What kind of a solution could be recommended by a proactive student in order to avoid an ugly 'solution' and loss of file sharing, yet reasonable enough that the University will accept it? IU has outlined 4 options at the meeting. Your thoughts?"
Direct Connect (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Direct Connect (Score:2, Informative)
The IT folks have tried to fix the problem with packet shaping and things like that to no avail. They need to (try to) block p2p at the internet gateway so that kazaa & company only work inside the network. Most of the time, someone else on campus is going to have what you're looking for anyway, so there's no need to tie up the outside line to
What ILLEGAL activity? (Score:5, Interesting)
--Mike--
Re:What ILLEGAL activity? (Score:5, Interesting)
The percentage is not that high. The guy providing copyrighted stuff is breaking the law. Not everybody downloading the copyrighted stuff is.
It's not as simple as you make it, get over it.
Re:What ILLEGAL activity? (Score:2)
Didn't we all learn that prohibition doesn't work?
--Mike--
Re:What ILLEGAL activity? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's always been that way. Can't justify it for you, but I can tell you that it's been like that for years.
"Didn't we all learn that prohibition doesn't work?"
Well I don't think that's the same thing. For one thing, the free price tag isn't necessarily the attractive factor of MP3s. Secondly, with services like Rhapsody or iTunes, getting what you want is easy to do legitimately. For it to be like prohibition, music itself would have to become contraband.
Re:What ILLEGAL activity? (Score:2)
Re:What ILLEGAL activity? (Score:2)
Re:What ILLEGAL activity? (Score:2)
Re:What ILLEGAL activity? (Score:1)
Theft: acquisition of anothers property without the owners consent (in this case, the owner is the copyright holder)
accessory to violate copyright law: you are participating in an act that violates the law, even if you did not initiate the act
posession of stolen goods: if you're lucky, you'll get charged with this, rather than theft.
Violation of the DMCA: if you
Re:What ILLEGAL activity? (Score:2)
- hit songs: illegal, but overplayed on the radio ANYWAY
- movies: illegal, although for older films, they get played on TV (and thus taped and copied and recopied by millions) all the time
- live recordings: quasi-illegal (most bands don't care, or encourage, as long as it's not to excess)
- porn: quasi-illegal (many porn companies don't care, or encourage this; some say it's good for advertising)
- pirated software: very illegal (this is probably the worst one.
Re:What ILLEGAL activity? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing in that article really defines what they intend to do with real infringement, I think people assume far too much when somebody cries p2p. As a student of IU, I also know that treating their students as criminals will cause issues. I'd just assume go elsewhere to finish my schooling if they start doing that.
Re:What ILLEGAL activity? (Score:2)
I'm sorry, but your post was a bit naive on several levels.
Fi
Re:What ILLEGAL activity? (Score:1)
Re:What ILLEGAL activity? (Score:2)
Apologies if I read too much into your post, but you seem to be equating a university's actions to protect itself legally with calling all its students (and by implication, you) criminal. There's a world of difference: the university is acknowledging the undeniable reality that some of its students are breaking the law, and taking steps to stop itself suffering as a result.
Now, that's only a slur on you if you're one of those students. If you're not, there are more constructive things you can do than stam
Re:What ILLEGAL activity? (Score:2)
I was going to mod you (-1, Troll) -- and I very rarely mod negatively -- but I thought a reply would be more constructive.
The problem with your post and the attitude it implies is that, while you make a good point that there are legitimate uses of P2P, you're ignoring the big problem. It is clear that a lot of P2P use, by students or otherwise, is for illegal (or at best dubious) purposes. If you make smart-ass comments and don't ad
I know what to do (Score:3, Insightful)
Rate limiting (Score:5, Insightful)
If piracy is the issue, (and it sounds from your notes like it is), there really is nothing you can do about it except block those ports. Even if you provide them with free & legal file-trading resources, the piracy will still continue.
And remember: no matter what you do, there will always be some smart stundent who finds a way around it.
Re:Rate limiting (Score:1, Interesting)
They tried this at penn state, initially just on uploads(it wasn't cuz they were pissed about file downloaders, they just wanted to protect their bandwidth) but eventually they put the cap on downloads
Re:Rate limiting (Score:1)
Ridiculously enough, it was on legal content, too--mostly swapping around very large media files.
Re:Rate limiting (Score:2)
Re:Rate limiting (Score:1)
As for viruses specifically; that's probably because they're more worried about a virus spreading all over the campus than they are about any given system becoming infected from the internet.
Re:Compromise Solution? (Score:2)
it's the TUITION...that's where they GET ya...
Re:Compromise Solution? (Score:1)
PSU (Score:2)
worst of all, the napster money comes out of my tuition...friggin rediculous
Re:PSU (Score:1)
Unblock if they ask for it (Score:5, Insightful)
Block p2p apps by default, but anyone who asks can have those ports unblocked. However, they must sign a form that says they will only share files they have legal rights to share, and understand that RIAA/whatever may from time to time scan for files they own, your name will be given to those groups upon request. Also make sure you demand they limit the bandwidth they use at the same time.
You can't really stop P2P, but this way you have done something.
Check with the lawyers before doing anything though, a mistake in handeling this situation can be far worse than ignoring it.
Re:Unblock if they ask for it (Score:2)
Well if you don't let them have ports unblocked at all, then you've stopped P2P, right? So I guess you can do it by omiting the "can have those ports unblocked part"
Anyone here from SUNY Stony Brook? I don't think anyone can download shit on campus from any of the P2Ps (something did work last year but not anymore, so I hear)
only one solution: unlimited filesharing (Score:1, Interesting)
Allow unlimited file sharing.
To keep the RIAA off your back, you need to pay them some kind of protection. Taking it out of a universal fee isn't going to work (as indicated in the linked document), so you have to include it in some other fee. Maybe anybody who uses more than a minimal amount of
Re:only one solution: unlimited filesharing (Score:1)
SSU (Score:4, Informative)
All filesharing ports are closed, and we can't run any servers that will get past the individual dorm, or in my case, set of local dorms.
Its only me and a other few people who have figured out their wonky settings, and are sharing some stuff through samba.
Re:SSU (Score:4, Interesting)
My thoughts (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Bandwidth issues are the same whether downloads are legal or not.
2) However you decide to pay for content, you're not going to provide everything everyone wants. To get movies, warez, porn, whatever people are still going to run Kazaa or the other piracy facilitation services and then you're back to square one.
Honestly, I don't understand what's wrong with simply holding people responsible for their actions. That's what everyone supposedly wants, until individual violators start getting hit and then it's "Waaaaah! The RIAA is being mean to kids!"
Hook up ... (Score:2)
Well I hooked up (and GOOD) via Craigslist (www.craigslist.org - pick a city)
I'm talking some freaky shit too, not your run of mill freaky but some stack overflowing, buffer overrunning, illegal exception throwing, divide by zero at runtime kind of freaky.
I would give details but it has absolutely nothing to do with college kids sharing P2P files - too bad. As for the OP: Ever consider sett
Re:Hook up ... (Score:2, Funny)
When I think of that, all I can visualize is that it would consist of home-brew MIDI files, and only of music copyrighted before about 1925.
Re:Hook up ... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My thoughts (Score:3, Interesting)
You can tell that people don't want to accept personal accountability when they start trying to tell you that it isn't "really" pirating or it isn't "really" wrong. Suck it up and accept what you're doing. Don't hide behind some weak-ass excuse for a justification that you made up when posting on Slashdot. Some kid in class tried to tell me that MP3s were originally 24 hour trials and then you had to delete them. Yeah, I'm sure people back then actually did that, too. :)
Ooooh, whats that? Thats
Personally... (Score:3, Insightful)
One approach would be to limit the upload capacity, then create a high-speed terminal like in the library or something. If they really need to legitimately get a large file to somebody in a hurry, they can burn a CD/DVD and then carry it down to the terminal to make available on the fast pipe.
I dunno. I'm just glad this isn't my problem to solve. You really need for students to have the best at their fingertips. Cracking down in such a way that the non-guilty peeps get burned is a hard way to solve this problem.
One approach (Score:5, Informative)
-Education. We include a "sharing copyrighted stuff is bad, mmmkay" lecture for all incoming students, and we make anyone caught sharing illegal stuff sit through it again. We tell people about the spyware in most file-sharing apps. We also include "how to turn off uploading and be a leech" in our user documentation because we know they'll do it anyway.
-Per-user bandwidth limits of 1GB/day. We had to do this for other reasons, but it had a significant impact on file-sharing.
-We use a packet shaper to give popular file-sharing ports the lowest priority without setting a hard bandwidth limit. That strikes the users as reasonable (since there's no hard cap), and it keeps the network usable.
-We slap the users hard when an RIAA/MPAA/whoever copyright violation warning comes in. If we get a copyright violation notice, you lose network access for the rest of the semester (and next semester too if it's close to the end of the semester). You can still work from the public labs, but not from your dorm. We do this for one simple reason: the RIAA knows our policy and we have a reputation with them as hard-asses. This means that we can reply to their messages with "problem resolved" and they believe us without pushing the matter, demanding personal info, or taking students to court. The students don't like it until we explain the alternatives to them.
Re:One approach (Score:2, Funny)
Re:One approach (Score:2, Interesting)
You did not mention that it is 1GB upstream per day. And even then it seems to be more of a running average tally, over what seems to be a 3-5 days.
Being a student, and a violator (warnings only) I have to say that I approve. 1GB upload hurts a bit on certain legal filesharing. (I used to upload foreign movies that had no distribution rights in the US). And it forced me to write a CBQ based watcher/limiter that keeps me constantly under 1GB. The last time I went over the limit is because the damn
Re:One approach (Score:2)
Is this really legal? I imagine that if is extremely unlikely that you'll get sued given that the movie has no distribution in the US, but are you really allowed to distribute it? Doesn't the US respect foreign copyrights?
Re:One approach (Score:1)
Since no one can make money off these movies, I am not hurting anyone financially...(well except infringers like me, only for profit...)
Moreover, many of these movies were produced in the communist countries. Theoretically they were owned by the people. Now I have no clue where did the ownership go, given privatization.
Now...here is
Re:One approach (Score:2)
My School (Score:5, Interesting)
If you simply ban certain protocols, people will always find ways around it, so I think in the end education is really important.
Re:My School (Score:1)
Re:My School (Score:2)
Packeteer is NOT an embedded Linux, it is a proprietary OS...as a matter of fact, Packeteer is almost the ONLY packet shaper with a proprietary OS and it is one of the big selling points for it...because it was developed from the ground up to do packet shaping...
We use packeteer as well and are certainly happy with it...the biggest problem is you have to watch what you decide to do...if you throttle P2P upload bandwidth, then it will throttle the download bandwidth as
Stop stupid students from being stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bob, in his dorm room wants a movie. He downloads 1.5GB over $CURRENT_P2P_SYSTEM. Cool. Bob tells Joe, his roommate about the movie. Joe downloads 1.5GB over $CURRENT_P2P_SYSTEM. Rinse, lather, repeat for 3 or 4 or 50 other students.
Had Bob put up his movie in a shared folder on his Winblows computer, it would have been downloaded over the internet once. But Bob, and his 50 friends are stupid and unable to right click on a directory. So the movie is downloaded 50 times.
Had it been downloaded once, well, Im not going to say it would go unnoticed, but it wouldnt be an issue. Copyrights? Beh. Insane amount of traffic that happens to be copyrighted? Well, thats costing us real money. That is causing significant load on the network. Real users are complaining. Solution: Traffic shaping. Port filtering. Suspending insane-traffic users.
If your a student in a dorm stop being so fscking stupid. Keep it under the radar.
Re:Stop stupid students from being stupid. (Score:1)
That's gonna go over really well with the Legal department.
Re:Stop stupid students from being stupid. (Score:2)
If the bandidth usage is reasonable, then the IT staff wont care what the bandwidth happens to be. If the bandwidth usage is insane, they will use any excuse to solve it, including caving in to outside legal forces.
Re:Stop stupid students from being stupid. (Score:1)
Private Wi-Fi networks owned by the students (Score:1)
Re:Private Wi-Fi networks owned by the students (Score:1)
I was wondering about this. (Score:2)
Re:I was wondering about this. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not planning to stay until Thanksgiving then? :-)
Re:I was wondering about this. (Score:2)
Find a Friend of the Appropriate Sex quickly who will be willing to take advantage of your conjugal visits. You won't have much time, so I'd go ahead and skip classes an' all; you won't be finishing them anyhow.
Re:I was wondering about this. (Score:2)
Re:I was wondering about this. (Score:2)
There's no way this setup would qualify for the safe harbor provisions in the DMCA (the good part of the DMCA that everyone forgets about) which would protect against that.
Theoretically, you could turn on the FTP and walk away, never to look at it again, and call it a community resource, but good luck convincing anyone in court that you
Freedom of Leech (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, the universities need to be aware that they musn't divuldge otherwise private information about their network users without a proper warrant, just as they would not do so with a student's records.
Don't get soft on this people, FILESHARING IS NOT A CRIME. There are countless legitimate needs and uses for p2p too numerous to list. Everytime you let someone take away your right to share or get a file, you're letting them take away one aspect of your freedom of speech.
Accordingly one should not abuse such freedoms. Trust me, the RIAA and the MPAA aren't putting out anything worth having anyway, so just go ahead and boycott them. And by boycott I mean do not buy, do not rent, and do not leech.
Bandwidth limiting (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is, even with bandwidth restrictions, those with a little bit of know how easily get around them, there are no real solutions to this problem on campus's. If the students bandwidth is restricted, then it just gets routed through the schools servers itself, which of course are not bandwidth limited (for those of you under this type of tyranical bandwidth limit, there is a clue as to how to solve this problem). The only real solutions are the ones that are like Penn states implementation of actually giving the students an option.
Of course no awadays on campus the bandwidth isnt really used up so much by music, but more so by movies, but thats another topic.
File sharing's illegal (Score:3, Interesting)
Per-host rate limiting (Score:1, Insightful)
Per-host rate limiting in the halls and Greek houses, will
begin limiting outbound traffic based on a bandwidth-per-host limit. Will start in Campus View this Thursday on a few subnets; will watch for problems, then will apply to all of halls and Greek houses. There will someday be a tool where users can check their usage. Symptoms for users to know when they're hitting their limit: slow response times. D
Re:Bah. You should not be sharing files. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why on earth not? If I couldn't do so, I'd have been royally pissed off at my university.
Now, *commercial* sites are a different matter, and almost all educational instutions have rules against them, since some of their federal subsidies depend upon not hosting commercial sites.
And I don't even think that file sharing
Tiered Service (Score:2)
Also, I don't think that packet shaping to block P2P is a
Re:Tiered Service (Score:1)
Look on other Uni's websites (Score:2)
Why allow file sharing? (Score:2)