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Copyright on Campus Gets Complicated
posted by md on Friday October 11, @09:04AM
from the Dorm-ethernet-ain't-what-it-used-to-be dept.
Digital Entertainment CNet reports that the RIAA and MPAA have begun sending letters to colleges and universities, urging them to take action against file-swapping on their networks. The letter, which was distributed to over 2,000 school presidents, played the tired anthem of the entertainment industries which argues that online file trading "is no different from walking into the campus bookstore and in a clandestine manner walking out with a textbook without paying for it."

At least some universities appear to be limiting file trading on their own, as the Mercury News reports that some schools have begun severely limiting the bandwidth available for student use. One wonders whether we will see a reversal of technology back to Slip and PPP modem dial-ups as a way to limit music and movie trading. All the meanwhile, of course, the cost of bandwidth and network technology decreases substantially every year.

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    Copyright on Campus Gets Complicated | Login/Create an Account | Top | 3 comments | Search Discussion
    Threshold:
    The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
    This also hurts legitimate use (Score:1)
    by gregorypierce on Friday October 11, @11:46AM (#376)
    User #510 Info
    While this will certainly harm file traders, this will also hard people who have legitimate use for the bandwidth to download things like SDKs or to make large files available such as renderings of animation projects. In the long run I wonder how much this will influence legislation as these college students will be the meat of the next government - and many of them have long memories.
    Resource use (Score:1)
    by aprentic (greplaw@sectae.net) on Friday October 11, @03:30PM (#377)
    User #383 Info
    I work in the network office of a small university.

    P2P networks take up a substantial portion of our bandwidth and negatively effects the use of our network for school related purposes.

    Clearly we want our students to be able to enjoy fast internet connections. We also don't want to position ourselves as censors.

    As a compromise we are investigating traffic shaping solutions. Hopefully we will be able to limit the use of the network for file traders at peak times but give them free reign at non peak times.
    Good Method, bad effects? (Score:1)
    by turmis (atullman@law.harvard.edu) on Sunday October 13, @10:42PM (#382)
    User #25 Info | http://www.geocities.com/atullman
    I've actually been waiting for this. Turns out you can actually designate how much bandwidth will get allocated to processes that use certain ports. I know a few universities use this method to cut down on online gaming, slowing the ports that such games use to a crawl. I'm sure they can do the same to ports commonly used by P2P programs. While this may be onerous to those of us who adore using college networks for file sharing, the universities have every right to shape what their bandwidth is used for, however, I fear that this will curtail the ability to use P2P for some of its legitimate applications like the sharing of information and files to help bridge the digital divide in developing nations.

    Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition. - Isaac Asimov

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