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Solutions for University File Sharing? 77

Posted by Cliff from the seeking-better-alternatives dept.
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?"
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Solutions for University File Sharing? More

Solutions for University File Sharing?

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  • Direct Connect (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pradeepe ( 608025 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @09:22PM (#8393310) Homepage
    you 'inform' the students that they need to share files within the network, and then the geekiest of them will run to setup a Direct Connect hub that's restricted to the university network. of course, the IT departments can't control the content, but atleast the bandwith won't be clogged up.

    • Re:Direct Connect (Score:2, Informative)

      by infernow ( 529374 )
      I totally agree. Here at Iowa State, they shut down the local file indexing services, so people turned to kazaa, which completely flooded our outside connection.

      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)

    by ka9dgx ( 72702 ) * on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @09:23PM (#8393322) Homepage Journal
    Ok, so far you've mentioned file sharing... where's the illegal part?

    --Mike--

    • Re:What ILLEGAL activity? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by phlyingpenguin ( 466669 ) <{ten.niugnepgniy ... {niugnepgniylhp}> on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @10:09PM (#8393625) Homepage
      I agree with this premise, and further I agree with the ideas presented by IU. If they want students to stop using p2p, they had better get their act together and put together a good looking package. I don't really see what's wrong with providing students with deals on legal downloads while strongly recommending it. This is okay as long as they don't actually stop p2p use. If they stop p2p, then many times many legal actions I do would be impossible. Unless they shut out more than just p2p useage (i.e. other used ports, SSH for tunnels etc), then there will be even more issues with general usability of their network on top of general disgust with conventional p2p blockage.

      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.

      • If they want students to stop using p2p, they had better get their act together and put together a good looking package.

        [...]

        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.

        I'm sorry, but your post was a bit naive on several levels.

        Fi

        • It's also naive to think that the total package doesn't matter. There are plenty of schools to go to, and to say all will treat me as a criminal is quite naive indeed. I don't personally care a lot about file sharing, but the other things that they may affect by a zealous attempt to block out file sharing. Don't misread me; it'd have to be pretty serious for me to move on to another school. I'm simply saying that it does matter to me how I'm treated in school, it is indeed the reason I didn't choose one of

          • 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

    • Ok, so far you've mentioned file sharing... where's the illegal part?

      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)

    by 10101001 10101001 ( 732688 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @09:24PM (#8393323) Journal
    As an IU Alumni, I support the position of suing the RIAA and MPAA for emotional pain and suffering. Other than that, I don't think anything sort of just blocking users one at a time will work.

  • Rate limiting (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lambent ( 234167 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @09:29PM (#8393367)
    If bandwidth is the issue, then selective rate limiting is probably your only sane option. And I'm not talking about quashing speeds to 3K/s. It sounds like you want to be reasonable, and that's good; the students will respect you more, and will be less likely to try to overthrow their fascist IT overlords.

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If bandwidth is the issue, then selective rate limiting is probably your only sane option. And I'm not talking about quashing speeds to 3K/s. It sounds like you want to be reasonable, and that's good; the students will respect you more, and will be less likely to try to overthrow their fascist IT overlords.
      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
    • My university just blocked all the ports used for filesharing altogether. You can't even share within the university network. They claim it's because of "virus problems", but it's been disabled for over a year. At the same time, however, they have published limits on maximum P2P traffic. Seems like they're saying one thing and doing another.
      • actually, that's a standard security practice: only allow those ports have a legitimate, current, and neccesary purpose.

        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.

  • PSU (Score:2)

    by wed128 ( 722152 )
    You could do what Penn State did, and buy napster accounts for all your students...then firewall the shit outta them so they can't use anything else...leaves us linux kids in the dark...

    worst of all, the napster money comes out of my tuition...friggin rediculous

  • Unblock if they ask for it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bluGill ( 862 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @09:41PM (#8393443)

    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.

    • Block p2p apps by default, but anyone who asks can have those ports unblocked. ... You can't really stop P2P, but this way you have done something.

      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)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Unless you want to destroy the computing environment at the U, with firewalls between dorm rooms, port blocking, lawsuits, and the endless, pointless bullshit that comes out of this mess, you only have one choice:

    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
    • Especially at a university, which should be the last place internet access should be limited in any way. Actually, that's the FIRST place it should be limited. Where is internet access most likely to be abused by people who aren't paying for it? Public universities, colleges, schools, etc. . If you want to know why, just take a look at the largest demographic at public universities: technically adept men and women in their mid twenties with limited finances and a large amount of free time. Coincidentally,

  • SSU (Score:4, Informative)

    by Beowulf_Boy ( 239340 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @09:48PM (#8393496)
    My college, shawnee state in ohio, is locked down tighter than.....something really tight.

    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.

  • My thoughts (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @09:51PM (#8393512) Journal
    It doesn't seem like any of these solve your two major problems:

    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!"
    • -Anyone who hooks up through Slashdot Personals -- you **MUST** post about it! Karma be damned!

      Well I hooked up (and GOOD) via Craigslist (www.craigslist.org - pick a city) ... does that count?
      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:My thoughts (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mattgreen ( 701203 )
      I concur.

      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)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @09:53PM (#8393526) Homepage Journal
    ... I like the education option. "This is legal, this is not." I think lack of understanding here is a bigger chunk of it than people realize. Especially the "Dont you get us in trouble" bit.

    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)

    by beegle ( 9689 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @10:20PM (#8393694) Homepage
    At the university where I work, we've taken a multi-pronged approach:

    -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)

      by Anonymous Coward
      this sounds like a certain turtle-affiliated college on the east coast... rest assured that the students know about your tactics, and approve of them, but the packet shaping of bittorrent ports is really pissing off the anime community on your campus.

    • Re:One approach (Score:2, Interesting)

      by NotoriousQ ( 457789 )
      Hi admin.

      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
      • 1GB upload hurts a bit on certain legal filesharing. (I used to upload foreign movies that had no distribution rights in the US).

        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?
        • Well...hard to say. The answer is that no one has the authority in the US to sue me. There is no patent or copyright protection. As far as I can see I am legally in the clear.

          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
    • So at your college, the RIAA/MPAA/whoever can pick random students and remove their internet access? How much proof do you require?

  • My School (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Prien715 ( 251944 ) <agnosticpope@nOSPaM.gmail.com> on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @10:23PM (#8393704) Journal
    We used something called the packeteer (google it). It runs an embedded version of Linux and basically allows certain types of services (e.g. P2P, FTP) to use a certain ammount of bandwidth. Additionally, the top bandwidth users were sent nasty letters (anyone downloading over 2 GB/day off the internet was sent one. Intranet traffic was not regulated, and since our LUG had a large and up-to-date file server (ftp.lug.udel.edu) Linux ISOs were non-issues). That takes care of the bandwidth issue.

    If you simply ban certain protocols, people will always find ways around it, so I think in the end education is really important.
    • there are also several competitors to packeteer which are cheaper for a higher level of performance. i expressed interest in packet shaping once to a salesman.... never did stop getting various other salesmen calling me about their products to do just that.
    • It runs an embedded version of Linux

      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)

    by T-Ranger ( 10520 ) <jeffw@NoSPAm.chebucto.ns.ca> on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @10:24PM (#8393715) Homepage
    Standard story I hear from anyone of a dozen people who work in the various IT departments at a local University.

    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.

  • You can't catch what you don't see on the wire...
  • I am going to college this fal, and was thinking about putting together a huge RAID (200+Gb), and then putting up an anonymous FTP for anyone to create (no delete) of files. Anyone have any advice on that?
    • I am going to college this fal, and was thinking about putting together a huge RAID (200+Gb), and then putting up an anonymous FTP for anyone to create (no delete) of files. Anyone have any advice on that?

      Not planning to stay until Thanksgiving then? :-)

    • Anyone have any advice on that?

      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.
      • Can you really get into legal trouble for operating an FTP?
        • You could get into legal trouble for knowingly contributing to copyright infringement. Among other things, that's good ole' fashioned conspiracy. (Seriously, not kidding.)

          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)

    by _aa_ ( 63092 ) <j&uaau,ws> on Thursday February 26, 2004 @12:04AM (#8394281) Homepage Journal
    A university in this context is nothing more than an ISP, and accordingly, the university cannot be held responsible for the actions it's users take, illegal or otherwise. As with all ISPs, the university should produce an AUP, and activly discourage illegal activities, but no further action towards file sharing should be taken. Users who violate the AUP should be removed from the network. This however does not justify eavesdropping or port blocking. Students should be avised upon entry that they connect at their own risk.

    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)

    by ezelkow1 ( 693205 ) on Thursday February 26, 2004 @12:52AM (#8394538)
    Being a student at a university next door to IU we also had problems with bandwidth usage. My freshman year bandwidth limitations were implemented to restrict data to 250megs a day, after that the download speed crawls. Even under modest use of surfing, listening to previews of music, the occaionsal porn and what not the limit is still reached even by those who didnt share files. Everyone protested this on campus and I believe the restrictions were removed.
    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)

    by the_truk_stop ( 448393 ) on Thursday February 26, 2004 @01:01AM (#8394589)
    Generally speaking, sharing files is illegal (copyrighted music, copyrighted movies, copyrighted software, etc). I think at this point, being proactive is equivalent to a thief complaining to the Better Business Bureau because the shop he steals from has put bars on the windows and security cameras in the corners of the shop.

  • Per-host rate limiting (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Below is part of an email sent August 20, 2003 documenting per-host rate limiting at Indiana University.

    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
  • Bandwidth costs money. If students want to use more bandwidth, fine. However, it's hardly fair to force other students (your random art student that sends emails and browses the Web) to subsidize his usage. Provide a couple of options, where students pay fair rates for the bandwidth they're using. If you're using a VPN setup or similar, it's pretty reasonable to do this securely -- most universities provide a "software pack" anyway for students.

    Also, I don't think that packet shaping to block P2P is a
    • I have to disagree a little bit on this. We have someone that works with us that is an absolute wizzard with the Pakateer packet shaper and needless to say even our VERY tech savy students are b!tch!ing and complaining about not being able to get around the restrictions we've put into place. It can be done, it just requires some good back end research and someone who knows his stuff :-)
  • Other university's websites often have a link to their P2P policy on them. For example my college's [cam.ac.uk] policy is fairly sensible.
  • What value does it have to a student's education to allow open file sharing in the first place? If I were a university admin, I would shut off ALL incoming ports on all internal computers, except those that are needed by the faculty, staff, etc. I seriously can't imagine any situation where a student's computer would need to act as a server.

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