Ohio University's new ban on peer-to-peer networking may well be cutting down on piracy, as campus officials say. But if they want to do a thorough job of stamping out unauthorized file swapping, administrators will have to show that they can take down "darknets."
Darknets are private hubs that let students trade music, movies, and software without connecting to the broader Internet, and the networks' obscurity is their chief asset: A darknet is much harder to find and police than a typical peer-to-peer service. Plenty of colleges have darknets, and as The Post of Athens reports, Ohio is no exception.
University officials say they are determined to crack down on darknets, and they promise that students who run those private hubs will be punished more harshly than students who simply download songs or movies. But shutting down darknets can be a bit like playing Whack-a-Mole, as many campus technology officials have discovered: get rid of one, and another pops up somewhere else. –Brock Read
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