BitTorrent Inherently Illegal? 857
Nohbdy001 asks: "Today I received a letter from my university's network administration advising me that my network access would be terminated due to 'illegal P2P activity.' The P2P activity that the e-mail cited was BitTorrent and the file being transferred was an update to the Azureus BitTorrent client. The letter stated, 'Until the courts decide that student P2P activity is permitted we will continue to block this activity on our network,' implying that BitTorrent is inherently illegal. It seems such misunderstandings are common, but it is particularly frustrating when coming from people in the IT field. How can a student respond to such an accusation in order to defend the validity of BitTorrent and continue to benefit from its legitimate uses?"
Legal Precedent (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a quote from a news story back in August [wired.com]:
"History has shown that time and market forces often provide equilibrium in balancing interests, whether the new technology be a player piano, a copier, a tape recorder, a video recorder, a personal computer, a karaoke machine, or an MP3 player," Thomas wrote. "Thus, it is prudent for courts to exercise caution before restructuring liability theories for the purpose of addressing specific market abuses, despite their apparent present magnitude."
You have no real alternative (Score:5, Informative)
Still, it's probably worth a polite note to the network administrator to request "clarification". State your case concisely (they're usually busy) and politely, and you may get lucky.
Re:I'm stuck also (Score:3, Informative)
I think your options are limited (Score:3, Informative)
In my opinion the best you can do is to to publicise the fact in your school and/or community papers. It might help if you got it in writing that the school has a policy of banning all new applications till courts rule that they are legal. It ought to warn prospective students that far from encouraging creativity, the school has a policy of stifling it, and they ought to stay away.
Downloading Linux Distributions? (Score:3, Informative)
Talk to your Ombudsman! (Score:5, Informative)
Student Governments (Score:5, Informative)
The other important question is whether this is a state or private school. One poster said you had no recourse because it was "their network"... but such is not the case is if this is a state school. There may be certain laws that protect fair access. Again your student government can be a valuable source of information in this area.
-Sean
Re:It's unfortunate (Score:1, Informative)
Re:You are fighting the University's lawyers. (Score:5, Informative)
But it can be challenged. Are you paying for net access? Is it included in the cost of whatever it is they charge you for your education?
Read their TOS. Find legal precedent where it says that p2p is not illegal. Collect signatures. Petition, campaign, etc.
Sounds like too much work? If you are not up to it then I advise you to get another ISP (and read the TOS before you sign).
If you decide to "walk around" their filters (tunneling, etc), don't complain later on if they somehow bust you. If you decide to simply ignore their warning and BT files anyway, notify them of your reasons for this. In writing. This way you get an air of legitimacy.
WARNING: The above is not legal advice and I'm not a lawyer. Talk to a lawyer and be prepared to walk into whatever situation you choose with your eyes wide open. You might not be doing anything illegal, but that's never stopped anybody from suing anyway.
Point to Legal uses of BitTorrent (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Legal Avenues (Score:3, Informative)
IAAL, so...
First, it was written so it would be libel.
Not necessarily... and not necessarily relevant. The only differences between libel and slander are the potential for damages and the standard of proof required.
But libel doesn't necessarily have to be written. Nor does it being written automatically make it libel. It was in a letter personally sent to the plaintiff. So, it's not disseminated in such a way that it would have a potential to be particularly damaging to the plaintiff. So I don't see a libel claim here.
Second, it was not published, only sent to the student, so it wouldn't even be libel.
All publication requires is that it be shown to one other person... that whoever wrote the letter showed it to someone else.
And third, it's their network so they can disallow whatever they want.
If it is a state-run school, the First Amendment applies and they cannot make content-based restrictions on speech. Whether that applies to this situation is arguable. But it is certainly not as clear as you make it out to be.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/shaw [dslreports.com]
Re:It's unfortunate (Score:5, Informative)
Chances are, the college has some form of student union, and student unions typically have access to legal counsel for when students get in trouble. I think this would qualify.
Re:Well... (Score:1, Informative)
This only affects motorola modems. Since then I have switched to a terayon modem and I can again upload at 40-50K/sec (although I think a lot of people did this as my connection sometimes gets very slow during peak times).
I've heard that they have since introduced packet shaping in the rest of the Country but I'm not 100% certain of this.
Here are a couple sources: Shaw Throttling Bit Torrent? [dslreports.com] and Shaw ISP Customers Experience BitTorrent Slowdown [slyck.com]
Re:Well... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's unfortunate (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.digriz.org.uk/jdg-qos-script/ [digriz.org.uk]
Re:It's unfortunate (Score:3, Informative)
Users can accumulate bandwidth at a set rate, and can burst when they need to. However, if you try to hog the bandwidth, you get throttled down really fast. For normal users, they get the bandwidth they need, when they need it.
not locked out (Score:2, Informative)
Guilty until proven innocent? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's unfortunate (Score:5, Informative)
Given my university's license, about the closest argument that they could make would be "excessive personal use", but even that falls pretty flat on its face, given the letter that the student was sent and the actions that they were taking (downloading a software update) that led to the ban. They certainly weren't doing anything that would fall under violation of local, state, or federal laws; they weren't attempting to disrupt the network; they weren't attempting to invade anyone's privacy; etc. The student didn't fall under any category listed.
Re:A little rewording for you... (Score:2, Informative)
My alma mater offers a Ph.D. in Information Technology
http://ite.gmu.edu/PhDprogr/main.html
Re:It's unfortunate (Score:2, Informative)
Tell your IT folks what you use it for (Score:2, Informative)
At Oregon State University, we ran into a huge problem with P2P sharing, in terms of bandwidth. One fall when the students came back, we were "in the straights" for several days - we were saturating our link to the commodotity Internet.
We discussed not allowing P2P on campus, but we learned from a few folks who were using it for legitimate research sharing purposes, and decided intead to use a packet-shaper and set a lower priority on P2P traffic. Additionally, our Housing group enforces pretty strict bandwidth limits (http://oregonstate.edu/resnet/policies.php). So far, this approach has been working great for us.
We do, of course, receive DMCA complaints on a regular basis (about 1-2/week for a University with 18,000 students - not bad, I think). When we get these complaints, we contact the person who owns the machine or webpage, find out if the file was really copywritten material, and make them take it down. Occassionally, we have gotten false reports from RIAA or MPAA, so we try not to assume that the files are being illegally shared.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Time for SSL mod for BitTorrent. (Score:3, Informative)
Contract of Adhesion (Score:2, Informative)
Contracts which a party isn't expected to read isn't considered to be enforcible. Basically, contracts are about mutual agreement, and if a party is expected to "sign or walk", with no real ability to bargain, then a court won't uphold it. (If you need the network connection, you might be able to get a duress argument in there as well). These contracts are called contracts of adhesino, and courts will refuse to enforce them. So, yeah. .
So why do they roll out such contracts anyway? 1) It's intimidating, and it works on most non-lawyers, who won't know enough to get legal advice from a lawyer. 2) Businesses ARE usually expected to read contracts 3) Plaintiffs can't make the argument "Well, they never TOLD me that I couldn't use P2P!" They did. Plaintiffs just didn't read it.
To conclude, your security policy is probably legally worthless, under the Common Law. It's also not likely that anyone is going to challenge it.
Re:Talk to your Ombudsman! (Score:4, Informative)
Civil Rights Claim (Score:2, Informative)
Completely Legal (Score:3, Informative)
Experience from where I study. (Score:2, Informative)
The "illegal" part is because enough people have used those to distribute unauthorized copyrighted material that the network disruption can be directly connected to them.
It is a major issue, because the university has to pay for the bandwidth it uses, and p2p clients use as much bandwidth as they get.
The admin mentioned that prioritizing them down does not work, as different clients popping up and changing ports all the time causes too much work. Because they don't serve much purpose to studies, it was decided that it is impossible to separate the legal from illegal uses with existing resources, and it is not feasible to pay for the extra bandwidth.
Here [helsinki.fi] is a site (in finnish) explaining the effect of p2p apps on university bandwidth use, with graphs
Re:Nobody is talking about fair use (Score:2, Informative)
You can even be given permission and not have the right to do so, although the only example of that I can think of is when the person you thought was the copyright owner wasn't.
Which is why DRM is so insidious. It claims to map 'copyright holder's permission' directly to 'right to make a copy', thus trying to remove centuries of American (and, hell, British) legal precedents and law that says that's not true.
And, as if that's not enough, in practice it's mapping 'permission of the person who gave the work to you' (as witnessed by public domain works distributed as ebooks with DRM that is illegal to break) to 'right to use' (as witnessed by the whole DeCSS thing).
It's really far out there, legally. 'Permission of the person who gave it to you' has never been required for a 'right to use'. (In fact, nothing has ever been required for a right to use.)