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Rosen, Valenti Warn Colleges About P2P
EducationPosted by timothy on Saturday October 12, @11:57PM
from the oh-and-have-you-met-our-lawyer dept.
fini writes "The RIAA and MPAA just sent a letter to 2,300 colleges or so, asking to crack down on P2P. Juicy nugget: 'Not only is piracy of copyrighted works illegal, it can take up a significant percentage of a university's costly bandwidth.' Also mentioned, some quasi-FUD on security issues. Six higher-ed honchos also sent a concurring letter. From the RIAA website, here's the story and the letters (PDF only). Mentioned as examples of model policies: Drake University, UNC Chapel Hill and University of Michigan . Interestingly enough, there is no threatening 'or else' stuff in those letters. Not yet…"

 

 
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· Lessig's Thoughts On Eldred v. Ashcroft Arguments
· Rosen, Valenti Warn Colleges About P2P
· AOL Threatens Peng, Demands Domain Handover
· Notes From File Sharing Symposium At Univ. Of Texas
· A Digital Certificate For Every Canadian
· New Anti-Circumvention Rulemaking Coming Soon
· Send Congress Your Comments On DRM Legislation
· MS Backs Down On Encrypted Digital TV Recording

<  Surprising Science Demonstrations? | Speex Joins Xiph To Bring Free VOIP To The Masses  >
Rosen, Valenti Warn Colleges About P2P | Log in/Create an Account | Top | 363 comments | Search Discussion
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(1) | 2 (Slashdot Overload: CommentLimit 50)
2300 letters (Score:5, Funny)
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12, @11:59PM (#4439361)
Is this considered spam?
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
not yet (Score:4, Insightful)
by Raiford on Sunday October 13, @12:01AM (#4439365)
(User #599622 Info | Last Journal: Sunday October 13, @04:51PM)
... Wars often begin with a conspicuous absence of threats

[ Reply to This | Parent ]
    Re:not yet (Score:4, Insightful)
    by irc.goatse.cx troll (semi AT getanotherfuckingisp DOT com) on Sunday October 13, @12:08AM (#4439400)
    (User #593289 Info | http://www.msn.es/we....goatse.cx/#goatsecx)
    That would be true, but do you really think colleges will fight this? Verry few really care that much about freedom. Faced with a one-easy-step solution (DRM? Palladium? some magic *AA black box?), I'm fairly confident they would use it. And can you blame them? A lot of colleges are struggling for money, saving on bandwidth and lawsuits would help immensly. IANAL but I believe they don't filter for the same reasons ISPs give uncensored usenet access -- They arnt liable if they dont filter any, but filtering some shows that they can and are willing to. (or some such law).
    [ Reply to This | Parent ]
    • Re:not yet by stratjakt (Score:3) Sunday October 13, @12:36AM
        Re:not yet (Score:5, Informative)
        by aronc on Sunday October 13, @01:15AM (#4439603)
        (User #258501 Info)
        There's plenty of public domain stuff out there. Last time I used a P2P app it was to collect some Christmas music for a party my wife threw. None of it was copyrighted to my knowledge.

        While I completely agree that p2p piracy (last time I used it was to get some music by a friend who distributes that way) it is, alas, more than likely that those songs were indeed under copyright. The musicial composition itself is most probably public domain but the particular recordings might not have been. Remember, if it was recorded after the early 20s it is still under copyright unless it either lapsed through neglect or was intentionally placed into the public domain by the author/artist.
        [ Reply to This | Parent ]
        If that music was recorded in the last 90 yrs..... (Score:4, Insightful)
        by Dr_Marvin_Monroe on Sunday October 13, @05:19AM (#4440066)
        (User #550052 Info)
        It sure prob. is copyrighted!....and NO THERE ISN'T PLENTY OF PUBLIC DOMAIN STUFF....

        Even if you are getting that music off a defunct "K-Tell" record from "Disco-77" you bet it's copyrighted....and Jack still says you gotta pay "K-Tell" for the right to use it....even if K-Tell isn't around anymore, you gotta pay him and his cousin Vinny.

        Think it's hard now....think down the DRM road where the access is controlled "per-play" rather than "I have the album"....as soon as the consumer looses the right to "hold the album/rights to listen".....it's all over....

        Think about it, that's where EULA's have been going with "revokable liscense agreements" and the rest of it. You no longer have the ability to keep using something that you bought, even if you still have the media.....time expired!

        [ Reply to This | Parent ]
      • socialism and left thinking by jetlag11235 (Score:1) Sunday October 13, @10:56AM
      • Re:not yet by Reziac (Score:2) Sunday October 13, @11:02AM
      • Re:not yet by uncoveror (Score:2) Sunday October 13, @05:14PM
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
      • Re:not yet (Score:4, Insightful)
      by thogard on Sunday October 13, @12:38AM (#4439486)
      (User #43403 Info | http://web.abnormal.com/)
      University legal departments are the only ones with enough resources to take on the RIAA and win. Keep in mind that out of a typical university budget, about 5% goes to teaching, 5% for building, 10% goes to special expenses (labs, computers), and almost all the rest goes to administration. Every sub-department under admin is fighting to prove its good for the univerity even though 90% of them could go away and the student and teachers could cope just fine. If you think those ratios are bad, check out the ones for your local public school.
      [ Reply to This | Parent ]
      • Re:not yet by nomadic (Score:1) Sunday October 13, @03:24AM
        • Re:not yet (Score:4)
        by crawling_chaos on Sunday October 13, @10:21AM (#4440499)
        (User #23007 Info)
        State Universities won't fight this. In case you haven't noticed, the economy's in the shitter and state legislatures are looking for places to cut. Getting the uni involved in a big, expensive public lawsuit is not a good way to keep the legislature off of their backs. They will comply. If they don't feel like it, a few nasty calls to the chancellor from the govenor's office will fix that.

        Plus, they can use this as an excuse to cut back on bandwith purchases and save a few bucks. They'll get way fewer complaints than if they cut back on perks for the football team.

        [ Reply to This | Parent ]
        • Re:not yet by phatlipmojo (Score:1) Sunday October 13, @02:53PM
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:not yet by nettdata (Score:2) Sunday October 13, @11:55AM
    • Re:not yet by dynweb (Score:1) Sunday October 13, @01:32PM
    • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • Re:not yet by Monkelectric (Score:3) Sunday October 13, @02:44AM
Hilary Rosen, Jack Valenti (Score:1, Funny)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 13, @12:03AM (#4439373)
Are they dating yet?
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Perfect People To Tell... (Score:2, Flamebait)
by Shuh on Sunday October 13, @12:03AM (#4439375)
(User #13578 Info | Last Journal: Thursday February 14, @03:53PM)
College is where people are taught to turn off their minds and subscribe to politically-correct orthodoxy, so shearing the sheep at the shearing station is the right tack for Valenti et al.

[ Reply to This | Parent ]
New info for Colleges... (Score:5, Insightful)
by theBraindonor on Sunday October 13, @12:03AM (#4439376)
(User #577245 Info | http://www.braindonor.net/)
Doesn't _every_ college that provides high-speed internet to students already know this!?

Sounds more like they are sending letters to colleges as a message to somebody else. Not the administrations, not the students, that's for sure.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Cease and Desist? (Score:2, Insightful)
by octalc0de on Sunday October 13, @12:04AM (#4439378)
(User #601035 Info | Last Journal: Sunday September 29, @09:30AM)
Interestingly enough, there is no threatening 'or else' stuff in those letters. Not yet…

But how could they add an 'or else' statement? The colleges haven't been doing anything. There's no way you can serve someone with a cease and desist or anything like that without THEM breaking laws. If anyone's breaking a law, it's the students!
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Where are our refunds??? (Score:5, Insightful)
by coupland (dchase.hotmail@com) on Sunday October 13, @12:05AM (#4439383)
(User #160334 Info | http://www.whengeeksattack.org/)
Though she's as bad as the rest, Courtney Love had it right when she asked how much she, as an artist, would be getting in refunds due to RIAA awards against MP3.com and similar services. If her balance hasn't been positive due to these offensive attacks then we can only assume this is only about fat, bald bureaucrats at the RIAA. I'd love to proven wrong but...
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
No doubt charged to the artists (Score:5, Insightful)
by thumbtack (thumbtack@juno.com) on Sunday October 13, @12:05AM (#4439384)
(User #445103 Info | http://www.boycott-riaa.com/)
The cost of which will no doubt, be charged as "operating expenses" to the webcasting royalties they are collecting, before the artists get a dime. The only thing the RIAA and their members are adept at is spending the artists money to guarantee that they never recoup.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Ahh.... (Score:4, Informative)
by di0s on Sunday October 13, @12:07AM (#4439397)
(User #582680 Info | http://cabbot.lightrealm.com/)
...but little do Rosen, Valenti, and the rest of the Consumer Control Cartel know that most college students trade amoungst themselves. Such was the case at my school and my friend's school.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
P2P is the next killer app. (Score:5, Insightful)
by Henry V .009 (`marstrail' `at' `hotmail.com') on Sunday October 13, @12:12AM (#4439408)
(User #518000 Info | http://slashdot.org/)
Before everyone goes off on P2P:

Right now there is a major server-side bandwidth shortage. It's expensive to run a major web site. There is a client-side bandwidth glut. It's cheap to browse the internet.

The server-side bandwidth cost means is very hard to host significant content for low cost, especially if you start to get popular. This hurts web content for everyone.

The solution? P2P-type networks. Move that client-side bandwidth over to the server side. Why should someone download a web page or file from a single server when they could download it from the last ten people who viewed that same page or file? Sending every web page you visit on to another person (or 5 people) does not incur a significant rise in the cost of you connection. Sending a web page to a million people a month from one server does.

And when P2P starts to open up the web for everyone, there are going to be a lot of people who are going to be pretty sorry that they were so narrow-minded that they made it easy for colleges, cable companies, and phone companies to restrict bandwidth for P2P networks just to save a few dollars.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
    Re:P2P is the next killer app. (Score:5, Insightful)
    by kenthorvath on Sunday October 13, @12:23AM (#4439443)
    (User #225950 Info | http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~kent/)
    Because as we all know, single server sytems are already somewhat insecure. Can you imaging the havoc that will be unleashed if you give 100,000 users the ability to serve out, say, slashdot's or cnn's web pages? This would certainly put a damper on any "trustworthy computing" that you may have hoped to have.
    [ Reply to This | Parent ]
  • Re:P2P is the next killer app. by DmitriA (Score:2) Sunday October 13, @12:25AM
    • Re:P2P is the next killer app. (Score:5, Insightful)
    by ComputerSlicer23 on Sunday October 13, @12:32AM (#4439466)
    (User #516509 Info)
    Yeah, there's a little company named Akaima [akamai.com], and a dinky opensource product named squid [squid-cache.org] that beat P2P to the punch a long time ago. Akaima can solve the problem from the server end, and squid can solve it from the client end. P2P doesn't have to optimize web page delivery, it's a solved problem. Maybe not widely deployed, but anybody can solve it pretty trivially.

    Okay, now P2P to solve multi-cast routing of streaming live content like movies and audio broadcasts so if 50 people on a single ISP are watching a football game broadcast over the internet live efficiently that's cool. Web pages are trivial. ISP's, businesses, colleges, have all solved this problem for the end consumer. Shit, you can't go to www.yahoo.com anymore without hitting an Akaima server. All cable modem providers in my area use transparent squid proxies to speed up web browsing.

    If P2P's big goal is to solve a trivial problem solved by the HTTP 1.1 spec, in conjunction with a couple of Open Source products, plus a couple of large business, I'd say P2P is about 3 years behind the times....

    That said, P2P has some cool applications and will solve some cool problems, I don't think Web pages is one of them.

    Kirby

    [ Reply to This | Parent ]
    • Re:P2P is the next killer app. by Henry V .009 (Score:2) Sunday October 13, @12:53AM
        Re:P2P is the next killer app. (Score:5, Informative)
        by ComputerSlicer23 on Sunday October 13, @02:04AM (#4439728)
        (User #516509 Info)
        Akaima has caching servers in on every backbone provider. You should never ever, cross the backbone when getting data from a site that has an agreement with Akaima. This is done, because Akaima will run their DNS server, and will serve you a different IP address for a web site to direct you to a akaima server site very close to you, thus keeping you near the "cheap" client bandwidth you talked about on your original post. The net effect of that, a whole slew of people who only move upstream 3-5 steps, instead of all the across the internet. Saving an incredible about inter-backbone bandwidth. You pay them Akaima some money, and they deal with the bandwidth issues. Oh, and a user never hit your site. So you need a nice dinky connection to feed Akaima your data when you change it. They have economy of scale, and are very proficient at the problem. Most bandwidth that doesn't leave a backbone provider is cheap. They have lots of internal bandwidth as a rule. The end user gets the content much, much faster, and the traffic on the internet is smaller. Oh, and your content only has to be sent to Akaima when you change it, and your done. So you've got a pretty good chance of fixing up the problem.
        Akamai doesn't do anything about bandwidth. It just stores information in its network closer to the end user.
        So after reading this closely, how do you propose to save bandwith other then getting the content closer to the user? Getting the content closer to the user is the holy grail of P2P isn't it?

        Squid solves the problem either by setting the brower up to use it as a proxy, or by setting up the a router to your upstream provider to transparently re-direct traffic to port 80 to a local squid server. So if anyone on your downside link attempts to hit the same page twice, you'll have no traffic leaves the network. Now your upstream ISP does the same thing. Now the upstream provider to them can do the same thing. The upstream provider from them can do the same thing, all the way to the backbone providers. So essentially, you pass thru various levels of proxying servers to get the content you want. Ummm, this sounds like a lot of Web Servers clusters passing around pages from other servers near them so you don't have to go to directly to the site. Which I'll bet money is paraphrasing your ideal P2P setup for web page delivery. Deployment of squid servers located on every Tier 1,2, and 3 bandwidth providers would look precisely like your P2P solution unless I miss my guess. This would mean when you asked for content, you'd only go upstream to the place it has been close to previously.

        It's identical the caching layers in a CPU. First you look in the L1 cache, then you look in the L2 cache, then you go L3 cache. Now you look in RAM, if it isn't there you look on disk. If you've got HSM (heirarchical storage management), you look on tape.

        How does this make a site cheaper... Well Akaima is cheaper then enough bandwidth to serve the pages yourself (if your big enough). It's cheaper, because you don't need nearly the bandwith, and Akaima already is huge, thus having economy of scale so they turn a profit on it, while saving you money.

        Assuming everyone runs a Squid Cache at the various levels as described above, you'll only get 1 hit per page on your website ever until the cached copy expires on your backbone providers Squid Cache. You have the 11 backbone providers talk directly to each others squid caches. When provider A wants a page from provider B it asks the squid cache of provider B, the squid cache goes to your site gets the page and caches it. From now one, anyone who wants your page will get it from the backbone provider who routes you onto the internet at large. Stop and think about it, you could be getting viewed by ever slashdotter in the world, and see a single hit.

        As long as the core caches have enough disk, so you don't get flushed out, you only need enough bandwith to do just that. That's it. You only need enough bandwidth to ensure

        Read the rest of this comment...

        [ Reply to This | Parent ]
    • Re:P2P is the next killer app. by 0x0d0a (Score:2) Sunday October 13, @02:22AM
    • Re:P2P is the next killer app. by mikeage (Score:2) Sunday October 13, @08:24AM
  • Re:P2P is the next killer app. by PhxBlue (Score:2) Sunday October 13, @12:41AM
  • Re:P2P is the next killer app. by aaarrrgggh (Score:2) Sunday October 13, @01:19AM
    • Re:P2P is the next killer app. by shorti9 (Score:2) Sunday October 13, @01:33AM
    • Re:P2P is the next killer app. by Henry V .009 (Score:2) Sunday October 13, @01:36AM
        Re:P2P is the next killer app. (Score:5, Insightful)
        by ComputerSlicer23 on Sunday October 13, @02:26AM (#4439768)
        (User #516509 Info)
        But here is what I meant by glut. Most people's connections (with exceptions), broadband or dial-up, are silent most of the time. They don't pay any more whether they use that bandwidth or not.
        Ummm, just out of curiousity, do you have any idea WHY client side bandwidth is cheap, and why server side isn't? If your basing the premise of your P2P services off this idea you'll completely violate all of the economics of bandwidth reselling. If you are saying you want to use spare dialup bandwith, and spare cable modem bandwidth to serve pages you've downloaded to other users, you'll drive the prices of consumer bandwidth to the price of server bandwidth. Why do you think so many bandwidth providers complain about P2P applications.

        ISP's oversell capacity. Last I heard it was something like 5-10 to 1 on high quality ISP's. They over sell capacity by a lot. This over selling is why they can sell it to you cheap, because your only paying for 1/5 to 1/10th of the cost of the bandwidth. That's why getting a cable modem is cheap, and getting a server hooked up at 1/10th the speed is more expensive.

        So I'll say it this way... If you're trying to use spare bandwidth from users to serve pages to other users, especially if they are off your local ISP, you will ruin the good thing we have going. We get bandwidth cheaper then we should as a consumer precisely because the content providers pay so much, because an average end user doesn't use that much bandwidth. If you break that up, you realize you'll get to pay server prices for your bandwidth right?

        If your structuring your P2P that way, it'll be a killer app. It'll kill the pricing scheme of consumer bandwidth.

        Kirby

        [ Reply to This | Parent ]
      • Re:P2P is the next killer app. by Grit (Score:2) Sunday October 13, @02:32AM
  • Re:P2P is the next killer app. by Doobian Coedifier (Score:1) Sunday October 13, @07:25PM
  • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
my college (Score:5, Interesting)
by jon787 (nospam@te[ ].resn ... du ['sla' in gap]) on Sunday October 13, @12:13AM (#4439415)
(User #512497 Info | http://tesla.resnet.mtu.edu/ | Last Journal: Tuesday September 10, @01:53PM)
Our tech person actually said that don't care what we do as long as they don't get any letters about us from the RIAA/MPAA attack dogs. So I got the file sharing type stuff running but it is restricted to the college's domain.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
    Re:my college (Score:5, Insightful)
    by the gnat on Sunday October 13, @01:51AM (#4439692)
    (User #153162 Info)
    I was told something similar a few years ago when I was one of the student support staff at my alma mater (a larger private university). The IT director said the administration got letters from the RIAA all the time reporting student computers distributing copyrighted files, and asking for the student names and contact info. The university's response was to contact the student personally, make it very clear that they were not to do this or else they'd lose their network connection, verify that they'd removed copyrighted material from public view, and then reply to the RIAA that any problem that might have existed was resolved. No admission of wrongdoing, no personal information- they handle it internally and tell the RIAA to bug off.

    This is by far the most sensible policy. The net admins have better things to do than monitor the network all the time, and the administration has no desire to turn over its students to entertainment lawyers. All they care about is keeping a well-ordered network, where students don't clog the T3 and don't get lawyergrams sent to the President's office. Students have in fact been thrown off the residential network for violations, but I don't think anyone's been in trouble with outside authorities.
    [ Reply to This | Parent ]
  • Re:my college by jon787 (Score:1) Sunday October 13, @01:07AM
    • Re:my college by Rib Feast (Score:1) Sunday October 13, @03:15PM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
umm...so (Score:2, Insightful)
by the_2nd_coming on Sunday October 13, @12:15AM (#4439418)
(User #444906 Info | http://slashdot.org/)
what is wrong with encouraging universities to police the student use of the university's network?

IMHO, having a university do this is more moral than an ISP (since ISPs are providers of a payed service) being asked or forced to police its customers. it is also more moral by far that legislating a solution.

besides, 99% of the information that is downloaded to universities from p2p is illegal in either copyright law or university rules( downloading test answers or term papers etc.)
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
  • Re:umm...so by Winged Youth (Score:2) Sunday October 13, @12:37AM
    • Re:umm...so by the_2nd_coming (Score:1) Sunday October 13, @01:20AM
      • Re:umm...so by the_2nd_coming (Score:1) Sunday October 13, @02:43PM
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:umm...so by AKnightCowboy (Score:1) Sunday October 13, @09:53AM
    • Re:umm...so by ceejayoz (Score:2) Sunday October 13, @11:36AM
  • Re:umm...so by yar (Score:1) Sunday October 13, @01:07AM
    • Re:umm...so by the_2nd_coming (Score:2) Sunday October 13, @01:26AM
      • Re:umm...so by aronc (Score:2) Sunday October 13, @01:37AM
  • Re:umm...so by JediPimp (Score:1) Sunday October 13, @06:25PM
We will throw the letter out... (Score:2, Informative)
by Nicholas_D on Sunday October 13, @12:17AM (#4439427)
(User #548536 Info | http://slashdot.org/)
University of rhode Island again.. we will probably throw it out cause A. We will NOT turn P2P off, we WILL however limit it, 10megs 20 burstable, I mean, the idfference between havinf 60 megs of bandwidth and 1 meg of bandwidth is alot. so instead of lettting P2P have 59 megs of our bandwidth we simply give it a limit, and a fairly decent one compared to some colleges. Nick
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
I'm a student at UNC (Score:5, Interesting)
by SexyKellyOsbourne on Sunday October 13, @12:19AM (#4439431)
(User #606860 Info | http://images.cafepress.com/zoom/1230045_zoom.jpg | Last Journal: Saturday October 12, @12:25PM)
I tried submitting a story similar to this to /., but I kid you not -- we in the local LUG were threatened with ARREST for protesting when Hillary Rosen personally came to speak to praise us for our policies.

No one was for it after we were told that by one of the CS teachers, and the protest was dissolved.

It was just like when Bush went to Ohio State [wsws.org], except it was for a rich corporate billionaire, not just post 9/11 presidential security!
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Bandwidth Costs (Score:1)
by erik umenhofer on Sunday October 13, @12:22AM (#4439438)
(User #782 Info | http://www.geocities.com/firebelly_erik/index.html)
Do schools pay for bandwidth? I know a lot of schools get thiers for free, and those who do pay i'm sure don't have metered systems that cost more the more you use. I figure almost all get a certain amount and pay for that weather they use it all or not. Maybe I'm wrong. So does the bandwidth argument really matter?
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Opposite (Score:5, Interesting)
by Bobulusman on Sunday October 13, @12:27AM (#4439449)
(User #467474 Info)
I'm at Cornell University right now, and interestingly enough, the administration has seemed to be doing the exact opposite, relaxing their guidelines.

The first week, we had take an online class where we learned that if we got caught sharing, we would have community service and stuff.

Then last week, they basically send an e-mail saying that they didn't care if we downloaded stuff, as long as we didn't upload stuff. I'm too lazy to go and check the e-mail, but I believe it gave directions on how to turn off uploads in KaZaA. Weird.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
  • Re:Opposite by csmorris (Score:1) Sunday October 13, @05:06AM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • Re:Opposite by rem1313 (Score:2) Sunday October 13, @06:40AM
  • Not True by fonnix (Score:1) Sunday October 13, @07:59PM
  • Re:Opposite by Seltsam (Score:1) Sunday October 13, @10:44PM
  • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
"Juicy nugget"? (Score:5, Insightful)
by tunah on Sunday October 13, @12:30AM (#4439462)
(User #530328 Info | http://tunah.net/)
Juicy nugget: 'Not only is piracy of copyrighted works illegal, it can take up a significant percentage of a university's costly bandwidth.'

Juicy? It *can* take up a significant percentage of bandwidth. Bandwidth *is* costly. The copying of copyrighted works, according to current concensus, *is* illegal. Even if you don't agree with the illegality of it, how is the fact that the RIAA believes copying is illegal surprising or revealing?

[ Reply to This | Parent ]
It is about flipping time that they sent a letter! (Score:2)
by saskboy on Sunday October 13, @12:33AM (#4439469)
(User #600063 Info | http://www.angelfire.com/mt/woodmtn | Last Journal: Sunday October 13, @01:06AM)
I, along with most others in residence at the University of Regina received a letter asking us to cease to use P2P programs on the campus network. Actually they told us to stop sharing copyrighted works, but that is about the same thing. Anyway, this was precipitated by a letter from Sony to the UofR. [rumour]
    I even heard that some students were "called into the principal's office" over file sharing, and had their wrists slapped.
    This year, the bandwidth in one residence has been awful. It takes up to 30 seconds to load a webpage at peak hours! I complained to the helpdesk, because I'm paying for HIGH speed LAN, not 14.4 dialup! I haven't even been sharing files this year, although last year I'd upload about 4 GB a day. I figure now that I've got most of the mp3s I need, the UofR should install a packet shaper [thetartan.com] so I'll be the first to respond to /. "first posters". I still need to be able to download Enterprise, so I hope they don't choke us off too much.

    Did anyone else notice the dark, erie website design that the RIAA uses? Kinda makes you wonder who is pulling their strings... the Devil?
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
U of M Policy? (Score:1)
by Vanden on Sunday October 13, @12:37AM (#4439479)
(User #103995 Info)
I'm a student at the University of Michigan, and there may be a policy against P2P file sharing of copyrighted material, but the University has done nothing to enforce it since I've been here (this is my 4th year). Policy doesn't do jack, and never will. Unless they're planning on going through each dorm room and checking each computer, they just shouldn't bother.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
ancient chinese proverb (Score:4, Funny)
by carpe_noctem on Sunday October 13, @12:40AM (#4439495)
(User #457178 Info | http://www.aboleo.net/)
"A journey of a thousand lawsuits begins with a single letter."
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Of course there's no threats... (Score:1)
by csmorris (.cmorri9. .at. .lsu.edu.) on Sunday October 13, @12:43AM (#4439502)
(User #610681 Info | http://www.wikipedia...r_Morris&redirect=no)

They're not fighting a war on P2P. They're fighting to liberate the innocent Americans from the evil tyranny of intellectual property thieves. That is, once they've garnered the necessary support from a higher governing body.

(Or am I getting my news items mixed up? Music/film industry, U.S. government, it's all so confusing!)

[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Phynd (Score:5, Informative)
by Gadgetfreak on Sunday October 13, @12:43AM (#4439503)
(User #97865 Info)
www.phynd.net is a great solution to P2P. I'm sure the RIAA and MPAA will hate it just as much as P2P, but both colleges and college students love it. Here at UConn, someone has kindly donated the use of their Linux box to run Phynd, which scours the network and catalogs all types of shared files (not just mp3/ogg or movies). In a college with thousands of on campus residents, this saves hunge amounts of internet bandwidth [money] by keeping file sharing traffic entirely on campus. The students are happy because there are almost never any dead links, and files transfer at full speed.
        Before this was implemented, P2P programs tied up HUGE amounts of bandwitdth. UConn was forced to administer a bandwidth quota per student, but fortunately that's only for off campus traffic, not local traffic.
        But the best thing about it is that the students solved the problem all by themselves. And UConn loves it because it's saving them vast amounts of money.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
  • Re:Phynd by pc486 (Score:1) Sunday October 13, @01:55AM
  • Re:Phynd by fault0 (Score:2) Sunday October 13, @02:00AM
  • Re:Phynd by Grendel Drago (Score:3) Sunday October 13, @02:31AM
    • Re:Phynd by nightbrkr (Score:1) Sunday October 13, @12:51PM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • Re:Phynd by SlimySlimy (Score:1) Sunday October 13, @12:14PM
Moral and Legal responsibilities (Score:2)
by idiotnot (idiotnot@yahoo.com) on Sunday October 13, @12:43AM (#4439504)
(User #302133 Info | http://members.visi.net/~idiotnot | Last Journal: Thursday October 03, @05:51PM)
· Inform students of their moral and legal responsibilities to respect the rights of copyright owners

Universities *can't* do this! Why? The skewed views regarding morality and the law which exist on college campuses today.

I can see it now.....a panel of "trained" students and administrators who find a student "responsible" for questionable uses of the computer network because he was running LimeWire. For this, he will be "educated" by having to take "educational experiences" where he's asked to share his feelings on the subject, and recite whatever it is that the University decides it wants him to believe that day.

This is all B.S. It sounds nice and clean, but these things are also accompanied with C+D letters from record company attorneys. They basically say that the university will be a party to the lawsuit if they don't stamp out P2P. I've personally seen it happen.

And if there's one thing that University administrators can't stand, it's the possibility that they could have to go to court.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
  • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
University Policy (Score:4, Informative)
by brsmith4 on Sunday October 13, @12:43AM (#4439506)
(User #567390 Info)
I don't know about some of the Universities that some /.'ers attend, but I would like to give an account of how mine handles p2p stuff. For obvious reasons, I would like to keep the name of the school anonymous. I work for my school's computer department on Linux clustering and research oriented computing. I have been with the department for about 8 months (almost since I started school). One thing that I really like about my school is how our network admins handle p2p. We have no 'real' policy on it. Basically, we leave it up to the users to determine what is right and wrong. There is a reason for this. We consider our network resources to be 'public domain'. They are paid for, in part, by the university endowment, but mostly it is paid for by tax payer dollars.

Now, since the government of my state has not placed a ban on p2p networks of any type, we are in no position to deny our users the right to use them. We are, however, allowed to throttle their traffic so that more of our bandwidth goes to university-related causes. Really, our department tries as much as possible to turn a blind eye to the p2p situation. We don't want to impede on our students abilities to use the internet in the way they see fit. The university will not, however, back a student who has been busted by the RIAA for illegally possessing copyrighted material.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Slashdot bias (Score:1, Flamebait)
by Valar (kungfoo.gamebox@net) on Sunday October 13, @12:44AM (#4439510)
(User #167606 Info | http://www.mp3.com/AtomicPlayboy/)
Come on now. I know we don't like the RIAA, but do we really have to include the "they havn't done x...yet" line in every story. Did it ever occur to anyone here that maybe the reason they didn't do it in the first place is that they don't want to do it. That's right, maybe they don't want to sue everybody! Maybe they are just defending what they beleive is their rights, the same way we all defend our right to privacy, etc..
Give the bias a rest, please.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Distributed annotation system for genome databases (Score:1, Informative)
by Ferguson on Sunday October 13, @12:50AM (#4439532)
(User #598858 Info)
I'm not sure if this is truly P2P but it is probably close enough (and was to a certain extent inspired by Napster) background.

The major biological databases (EMBL, GenBank, Swissprot etc.) are repositories for sequence data, the information that describes the order of the DNA or proteins (depending on the database). This is collected and curated by a relatively small number of people compared to the size of these databases.

This information is relatively useless without annotation. Annotation is the description of the biological role of the sequence and which bits are important. Unfortunately annotation is difficult and time consuming for people who are non experts to maintain. THis means that many of the entries in the databases are either poorly annotated (poor), have out of date annotation (poor) or blatently incorrect annotation (really bad).

A system of P2P sharing of annotation data has been devised where an expert working on gene Xyz can make available his own annotations without having to burden the overworked people at GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ to make updates to the central database. Interested parties can access this data in a P2P manner (ie a query on 'what does anyone know about Xyz').

One of the main protagonists of DAS (Distributed Annotation System) is Lincoln Stein at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (yes, of CGI.pm fame). It will also be presented at the Bioinformatics Open Source Conference in July this year (where I hope to find out a lot more about it too..)

This sounds like a perfect example of productive P2P.Have a look at http://stein.cshl.org/das/ for more information. I know that at least one of the authors on the paper referenced has been guilty of reading Slashdot in the past so maybe he would comment.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
A little case study (Score:4, Interesting)
by Vadim Makarov (makarov@vad1.com) on Sunday October 13, @12:50AM (#4439533)
(User #529622 Info | http://www.vad1.com/)
About half of this collection [skazka.no] of Russian anthems originated from now-defunct Napster. I believe that the collection is now one of the largest, and linked to by many researchers.

If my university prohibited Napster, as some othes Scandinavian schools did, the collection would probably have never started.

Worse than that, I would never know first-hand what P2P is. This is about academic freedom: you should be allowed to test whatever darn new thing is out there, for whatever reason, otherwise the school lags behind. What you use it for, is your responsibility, of course.

Oh yes, I'm first-hand aware of the associated headaches (cleaning up the lab computers from those pesky money-generating add-ons that pop up an ad at the timing-critical phase of your data acquisition :-).

[ Reply to This | Parent ]
You're downloading COMMUNISM! (Score:2, Funny)
by cyber_rigger on Sunday October 13, @12:51AM (#4439535)
(User #527103 Info)
When you Pirate MP3s You're Downloading COMMUNISM

:^) [mystarband.net]
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Universities and Copyright (Score:1)
by yar on Sunday October 13, @12:53AM (#4439538)
(User #170650 Info)
Universities do pay for bandwidth, albeit at a lower cost than most commercial entities. These costs, of course, are passed along to students (and/or taxpayers).

I'm a bit disappointed in Chapel Hill's copyright policy and the way they adress MP3's (to paraphrase, 'most are illegal').

It's interesting to note that each of these policies treats fair use for education purposes a bit differently, and all are very vague and conservative in their treatment of fair use...

Some of the instructions are, quite frankly, wrong in their specifics (for example, U Mich's instructions on how to determine if a work is copyrighted, while factually accurate for current works really applies only to things created in the last decade or so).

I also work at a university, and we've gotten- and had to respond to- a few DMCA notifications from the RIAA. These events really are a pain, primarily in man hours. A big problem is that these types of events really make university officials want to attack P2P usage in general. Attacking bandwidth "costs" is often an excuse to ban P2P networks altogether, even though there are ways to restrict bandwidth... actually, is there any place that addresses this topic, specifically? It would be nice to have alternatives to show to university administrators...
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Personally, I say: Ban P2P on Campus. (Score:1, Informative)
by Wakko Warner on Sunday October 13, @12:56AM (#4439550)
(User #324 Info | http://bitey.net/slashdot-sigs/ | Last Journal: Saturday March 09, @12:38AM)
And, why not? Rosen and Valenti are right: bandwidth isn't cheap. At my last year of college, there were times the Internet was unusable because of Napster users. Making P2P filesharing more difficult is in the best interests of every college, from both a legal and financial standpoint.

- A.P.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Internet *is* P2P (Score:1, Interesting)
by Ferguson on Sunday October 13, @12:57AM (#4439555)
(User #598858 Info)
What is P2P? It just means any connected node (called host) on the Internet can connect another one, without one system explicitly meant to be a server only, and the other one a client.

What is so special about that, why all the fuzz? Even the notion of defending P2P makes me sick and is absurd. The Internet is built on (mostly) the TCP protocol, which allows for any node to connect to any other node directly. The Internet *is* P2P and has been so from the beginning.

It is normal to telnet from machine A to machine B, and then telnet back from B to A. It is normal to act both as an ftp client and server, in fact before the web became popular, in the old days, almost any connected node to the Internet acted both as client and as server.

Why is this "evidence" needed? People trying to forbid P2P are trying to forbid Internet, or at least trying to fundamentally change its netowork protocol (which is impossible).

Only ISP's could block incoming connections, thus making "P2P" (how I hate that word, describing something that has been around for ages as if it were something new) impossible. Not many of them do (luckily), only having no fixed IP address makes acting as a server a bit more complicated, but things like dyndns get around that.

One might imagine a future where anyone with a dynamic IP address (hard to trace) is prohibited by the state to have incoming connections. That is a nightmare but I don't think such a draconic law is very probably, and it would be very hard to enforce too.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
My Alma Mater told RIAA to shove it (Score:5, Interesting)
by EmagGeek (ehidle&ie-ap,org) on Sunday October 13, @01:01AM (#4439567)
(User #574360 Info | http://www.ie-ap.org/)
The RIAA tried this crap a few years ago. Most of the Universities they contacted politely told them that it's not their job to enforce Federal law, and that they had no intent to try to put the technology in place that would prevent P2P networking. I know my Alma Mater was one of them, so I'm very interested if they will change their mind this time, keeping with their rapid and steady descent from a top notch university to just another sea of politcal correctness without any hint of quality education. After all, they'll be too busy playing Internet Cop to bother teaching anybody anything.

Deep down, the RIAA knows that it has absolutely no hope of forcing this upon universities, which is why these letters are absent any cease and desist language. They're just going to run it up the flagpole and see who looks.

The final word should be here that it is the job of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government to enforce Federal law. No other entity, whether state or local, has the jurisdiction nor obligation to enforce the CFR. If distributing copyrighted material is a federal crime, then it's the justice deparment, and no one else, who has the power to indict. Civilly, I find it hard to believe that the RIAA would be able to prove that distributing a song cost them any money. What downloader is going to take the stand and testify that he/she would have bought the CD had they not been able to download it? I sure wouldn't. In fact, I would testify that the ability to "try before you buy" has led to my purchasing several CDs that I normally would not have even known about, let alone bought.

Every single Borders bookstore allows you to listen to a CD, in CD quality, and in its entirety, without any inhibitions, before you buy it. Does that not constitute illegal distribution, i.e. allowing someone to listed to copyrighted music without paying? Why isn't Borders being served? How is this different than P2P, save the portability of the music?

[ Reply to This | Parent ]
  • Who was your alma mater? by scubacuda (Score:2) Sunday October 13, @01:06AM
  • Re:My Alma Mater told RIAA to shove it by DarkVein (Score:1) Sunday October 13, @02:54AM
    • Re:My Alma Mater told RIAA to shove it (Score:4, Insightful)
    by mr. methane on Sunday October 13, @03:41AM (#4439916)
    (User #593577 Info)
    A few years ago, P2P was a minor network application which paled in comparison to the deluge of traffic from people downloading off the web. Web traffic grew wildly for several years, but is limited by several factors, including the ability of a person to sit there and view content they've downloaded.

    Even the most ambitious web surfer who plays online games will be hard-pressed to average more than 250kb/s over a 24-hour average. A typical end user, browsing popular sites and sending emails, will be far lower. Networks are built on these assumptions.

    P2P kills this. A modest, unattended workstation suddenly can burn up 2-3mb of bandwidth, around the clock. A typical school with 2,000 students will normally get an OC3, probably billed on the basis of an average of 60-70mb/s. Cost of that will be roughly $20k a month.

    Now, 10% of the students discover P2P. Even with some of that traffic staying on-net, they will still be looking at spending an extra $40,000 a month to support the MP3 habits of a couple hundred students.

    Yep, the RIAA is heavy-handed, and would be more than happy to see anything with more storage than a 3.5" floppy banned. They're not going to get their way.

    But the people who run the networks -- colleges, businesses, and cable companies -- look at the alternatives:

    1. Buy $650,000 of new networking gear plus $300,000/month in bandwidth, and implement monitoring to comply with occasional court orders.

    2. Ban any computing platform capable of P2P (i.e. linux) from network connections unless the user is willing to pay for usage.

    Faced with a quote from Cisco for a 300-pound router on one side of the desk, and a petition demanding continued access to pirated software, I would rather tell the kids to go buy a CD than explain my capital budget request to the board. :-)
    [ Reply to This | Parent ]
  • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
Think about why the RIAA did this... (Score:5, Insightful)
by scubacuda (scubacuda@inam e . c om) on Sunday October 13, @01:02AM (#4439572)
(User #411898 Info | http://www.kernel32.org/)
Seriously, think about why the RIAA is targeting colleges.

Colleges shape the way generations think. If they simply sit back and allow millions of students get accostomed to d/ling MP3s, then they have an uphill battle to fight later. They are scared to death of a new generation thinking there is nothing wrong with this.

Most of us here on the boards fit in the 20 to 50 year old category. We at least remember what it was like to have to *buy* a cd! Think about the impact of those below us who will grow up in a culture where, if you want an album, you download it and burn it yourself.

From the RIAA's point of view, it's easier to send a watered down "cease and desist" letter rather than rethinking ways to relate to this new demographic.

[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Copyright Infringement (Score:1)
by HFXPro on Sunday October 13, @01:07AM (#4439587)
(User #581079 Info)
Using a computer to copy or store any copyrighted material (text, images, music, movies, etc.) is a violation of the law, and leaves you liable, on conviction, to heavy fines. - Drake University.
Wow, I just stored this on both slashdot's computer, my computer, and Google's. Hope it wasn't copyrighted. ;-)
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Colleges Working Together... (Score:2, Interesting)
by fire-eyes (sgtphou@@@fire-eyes...dynup...org) on Sunday October 13, @01:08AM (#4439591)
(User #522894 Info | http://fire-eyes.dynup.org/)
If colleges bind together and work with each other, RIAA and MPAA will certainly not be able to shove them around.

Let's see which ones have backbones and which ones do not, this may get interesting.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Peer to peer is evil (network wise) (Score:2)
by MavEtJu ((gro.ujtevam) (ta) (niwde)) on Sunday October 13, @01:15AM (#4439604)
(User #241979 Info | http://www.mavetju.org/)
Peer to peer traffic is evil, network-wise.

For one webpage and N visits, you need N transfers.
If you add M caching proxies on strategic places, you end up with with not-really but close to N/M transfers. This will result in more local traffic and less non-local traffic.

This principle has been practised on the Internet a lot in the past. Take for example USENET. Instead of sending all messages to all people, they were collected on central servers and people could access them locally via there. This resulted in more local traffic and less non-local traffic.

Same with multicast radio. instead of sending N streams from one central server, they can send one stream which is distributed over the internet and forked at routers on which the traffic splits. Result: only one stream per channel.

So, if people started to make "peer-to-peer-caches" on strategic places, you could get all your music from there instead of having it to fetch from a far-away-country. Result: more local traffic, less non-local traffic.

If we only could map the law on this network-design, life would be so difficult and the internet would be so much faster for the data which can't be cached.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
oh great... (Score:2, Funny)
by skhisma on Sunday October 13, @01:23AM (#4439628)
(User #598808 Info)
... now the admin at my school is going to get scared and block every port known to man.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Early Electrical Grids (Score:5, Insightful)
by shoemakc on Sunday October 13, @01:41AM (#4439670)
(User #448730 Info | http://slashdot.org/)
The whole situation reminds me of when electrical grids were just being set up, however metering was not widespread and the available meters crude.

Eventually when the technology improves, the system will have to move to a "pay what you weigh" billing scheme just like all of our other utilities.

I mean, let's face it. Internet access is becoming a utility, just like electricity, water gas, etc. Why then should it not be billed by the gallon, kW or whatever just like any other utility?

I know it sounds aweful to the all-you-can-eat salad bar culture, but it's probably inevitable.

-Chris
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
My experience with suspected "copyright violation" (Score:5, Interesting)
by crimsun (chenda@cs.unc.edu) on Sunday October 13, @01:44AM (#4439677)
(User #4771 Info | http://www.unc.edu/~crimsun/index.html)
I worked for a couple networking depts on campus during my undergraduate "career" at UNC, among which was ResNet [unc.edu]. I've learned a _ton_ during my years at UNC, and I continue to learn at work and in external studying. I worked with some truly great people in ATN and computer science, namely my bosses in ResNet and the security folks.

Early in my college stint, one of my Red Hat machines was hacked literally minutes after I ifup'ed eth0. Needless to say, I took an immense amount of heat because that computer was subsequently used as a waypoint to launch a DoS. What a turning point. Those who've interacted with me since have known me to be extremely critical of standard security procedures at universities; I've been very outspoken in pushing the use of strict ssh2, strong passwords, forced password expiration, keeping current with application and service updates, reading and generally being security-conscious, and other what I consider security essentials from an administrator's viewpoint. I say this because most students don't care about the difference between ssh2 and telnet; they just want to check their email and download mp3s.

Which brings me to my second point. During my junior year, I was part of one of the first large OpenNap networks. Although the particular server I operated had the enable_share parameter disabled, the nature of the network setup allowed information transfer over the entire network and thus anyone--even on a host with sharing disabled, like mine--could retrieve search results for a song search. The RIAA wasn't too happy (I don't doubt this was discovered through napigator), and in the end I had to sign a number of documents promising I would never infringe copyrights again, use excessive network resources, etc. This is despite the fact that I was operating a completely legal OpenNap server--my boss at ResNet affirmed that I wasn't sharing.

What this goes to show is that universities with _competent_ security and copyright-aware folks will throw up a safety net for you _if you're doing the right thing_. The EULA for ResNet at UNC and various links already cited in the posting above make explicit the methodology of dealing with suspected copyright violation. While I wasn't happy at the time, I have to acknowledge that UNC gave me a lot of support for which I'm grateful. The basic point is "don't do any stupid, and you won't regret it." If however, the RIAA decides to chase you down as they did me, as long as you're within your proper use, you should be ok.

I've heard separate stories about mistreatments on separate protests, but those are unfortunately not things for which I can vouch.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Dear RIAA, (Score:1, Troll)
by Eric_Cartman_South_P on Sunday October 13, @01:50AM (#4439689)
(User #594330 Info)
Dear RIAA(TM),

Fuck you very much for your illegal suppresion of free thought and information. Believe it or not, there is a WORLD of "cool stuff" that is not under copyright, and is available on P2P systems.

There is more to life than the cunt Britney Spears(TM) you push into peoples eardrums.

I'm drinking water every day, 8 glasses full, because one day far far away I'm going to take a really long piss on someone's grave. Care to take a guess whose?

Regards,

World

[ Reply to This | Parent ]
blah, blah, blah... (Score:1, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 13, @01:59AM (#4439715)
"the evil p2p sucking up bandwidth" argument doesn't do didly squat. my school realized that p2p was sucking up 80% of bandwitdh... so now they rate limit p2p programs... and now p2p uses 4%.

students are happy, school is happy that students are happy, and school will only shut down a student if it is proven that the student has copyrighted material that she/he is uploading to other users... now, my school doesn't give a shit and they let RIAA worry about that...

once in a while RIAA catches a student with (c) stuff that they are uploading and sends an email to security... blah, blah, blah.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
When I went to college... (Score:4, Funny)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 13, @02:24AM (#4439758)

When I went to college the really high-tech people were running 1200 baud dial-up to BBSes.

Ahh, for a Commodore 64, a 1670 modem, and nibbleterm. Those were the days, my friends. Now every college weenie has KaZaA and thinks they're hot stuff. I don't think I paid for any software ever for the C-64, and most of it was swiped at 300 baud or at file sharing parties - we called them GT's (Get Togethers). I don't think I got the 1671 until 1986.

And we used to Phreak MCI and Sprint by hand.
Of course there was the day that the FBI came knocking at my door...

Music sharing? Albums recorded to cassette tape.

Kids today just don't get the finer points of stealing. It's all about instant gratification now. I say, cut the cord and take away their high-speed internet. Let 'em P2P at 300 baud over POTS like we use to. ;)

[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Some colleges like it (Score:5, Interesting)
by tuxlove on Sunday October 13, @02:24AM (#4439760)
(User #316502 Info)
A friend of mine is a professor at Lewis and Clark college in Portland, OR, and he tells me that they purposefully do not block P2P of any kind. They consider this sort of a student recruitment tool. It does tend to clog their network on Friday and Saturday evenings when students are busy downloading MP3s and pr0n, but their response to the issue is to add more bandwidth to the Internet.

As far as they're concerned, it's one of the costs of doing business as a college these days.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
think a little (Score:3, Insightful)
by joenobody on Sunday October 13, @03:21AM (#4439871)
(User #72202 Info)

Interestingly enough, there is no threatening 'or else' stuff in those letters

Duh. If a college employee hasn't yet learned to read between the lines, they're not long for their job. College, as a business, have more intrigue and politics than a junior-high school girls' clique.

[ Reply to This | Parent ]
VALENTI!!!!! (Score:3, Funny)
by sinserve on Sunday October 13, @03:25AM (#4439881)
(User #455889 Info)
Valenti needs to stop behind that "businessman" persona and start getting real. I mean, what
kind of self respecting Sicilian threatens others with the law?

Valenti, come out of the closet and start busting some balls man. These freckled white kids
need to see what descipline is suposed to be. Show these motherfucking little bastards WHO is
the daddy.

The RIAA needs its own army of made men to do business.

[ Reply to This | Parent ]
I agree on bandwidth (Score:5, Informative)
by chazzf (cfulton@@@deepthought...org) on Sunday October 13, @03:33AM (#4439897)
(User #188092 Info)
I work tech support for a small midwestern liberal arts college. We've got a 6 megabit outgoing. We had the subnets for KaZaa, WinMX, etc blocked. The first week of classes the connection was great. Then word got out that Morpheus was still working. Within a day the outgoing had slowed to a crawl. I like p2p as much as the next Slashbot but darn it, the network can't take that kind of abuse. We continue to allow LAN file sharing and AIM file transfers because they don't suck bandwidth, but the major p2p apps are just too wasteful...

~Chazzf
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
viva la .tar! (Score:2, Insightful)
by mwhahaha (mwhahaha AT vt DOT edu) on Sunday October 13, @03:46AM (#4439926)
(User #172475 Info | http://slashdot.org/)
As many filtering programs work on extentions, I know that many people are just .tar'ing up entire cds/movies to bypass these restrictions. The RIAA/MPAA are not going to win this no matter who hard they try. They need to be thinking about the future, rather than trying to save the past. This is what happens when older generations fail to even try to adapt to the newer generation.

No one in any important position in America learns from their mistakes, they just repeat them with different varieties of ideas. (See: The President, Corp. America, Misc. Associations)

NOTE: While I am not supporting these things, I do believe the RIAA/MPAA/Government need to wake up and listen to the younger generation if they want to survive in the future. *Listen to the next generation, or you're not going to be on social security very long!*
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Local Music (Score:2, Interesting)
by seven89 (.gro.speep3m. .ta. .cr.) on Sunday October 13, @09:44AM (#4440397)
(User #303868 Info | http://m3peeps.org/manif.htm)

Maybe it would be a good thing if everyone stopped "sharing" the RIAA's music. It would be even better if everyone stopped listening to it. Colleges could set up music servers containing only works for which free distribution has been authorized by the performers, composers, lyricists, etc. Geeks could write spiffy computer programs to reduce the administrative burdens of such arrangements. They could also develop popularity metrics and write programs to compute them.

All of this would help "localize" music. Often enough, local bands would want their music available freely on the local server in order to promote attendance at live performances. Fans would be better able to find suitable entertainment. Artists and fans would be able to meet other artists and fans with similar interests.

Obviously, a grand shift of this sort could have many economic, social and political consequences. When a formerly centralized industry becomes decentralized, the people formerly at the center lose. As Tuli Kupferburg wrote, "When the mode of the music changes, / The walls of the city shake." That might also be true of modes of distribution.

[ Reply to This | Parent ]
P2P has legal uses.. (Score:3, Insightful)
by nolife on Sunday October 13, @10:55AM (#4440581)
(User #233813 Info | http://slashdot.org/)
For the last week or so I have been leaving a machine with KaZaa Lite running non stop.

Even though I am capped at 128kbits upload, people have still managed to pull between 500MB to roughly 750MB a day from it. Only amature car/street racing videos and the psyche iso's. NO illegal material at all. The RIAA/MPAA can kiss my ass. P2P has a purpose and I am using it in that manner.
   
What about FTP, usenet, IRC, IM's? The list goes on and on. Maybe the RIAA/MPAA should skip the middleman and complain to the retailers that are selling computers to students. That would solve the copyright and bandwidth problems.

5 step process for outdated business model, if you can't beat 'em:
  • Lobby lawmakers
  • Use PR money for FUD
  • Manipulate the numbers
  • Modify your business plan
  • Join them

    They are running out of options!!

    • [ Reply to This | Parent ]
    Drake Alum speaks out (Score:1)
    by Dust31 on Sunday October 13, @11:07AM (#4440619)
    (User #140804 Info)
    I'm not surprised about Drake now being a "model" for the RIAA. But back in the 1980s, Drake would have been anything but a model. Software copying (notice I didn't use the p-word, as there are no oceans anywhere near Drake) was rampant, and the Journalism school and the Times Delphic were generally the source of all the software. But that was 15 years ago, and Drake must have cleaned up its act since then.

    Still too bad, though. I don't agree with these measures, and Drake won't be getting any donations from this alum.
    [ Reply to This | Parent ]
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