Threatened by Entertainment Companies, High-Speed File-Swapping Network Closes

By BROCK READ

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Threatened by entertainment companies, high-speed file-swapping network closes

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The popular peer-to-peer network that turned Internet2's high-speed research infrastructure into a digital swap meet closed down Monday after months of legal attacks from record companies and movie studios.

The shutdown of the network, known as i2hub, is the latest in a string of victories for the entertainment industry in its battle against illegal file sharing. In recent months, industry officials have argued that grassroots peer-to-peer networks like i2hub have become more hospitable to campus piracy than commercial file-swapping networks like Grokster and Morpheus.

Before its demise, i2hub served students at over 200 institutions that are connected to Abilene, Internet2's research network. The peer-to-peer hub, run on an open-source file-trading program called Direct Connect, was founded in 2004 by Wayne Chang, then a student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

In April record companies and movie studios started filing lawsuits that accused students of using the network to pirate music and films. The Recording Industry Association of America has since filed suit against 635 i2hub users at 39 different institutions.

Lawmakers have also sought to put an end to i2hub. Last December two influential members of Congress sent a letter to Douglas E. Van Houweling, president of Internet2, asking him to crack down on the rogue network. The congressmen -- Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas, and Howard L. Berman, a Democrat from California -- are the ranking members of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property.

Internet2 officials responded by sending the committee a report on the steps they had taken to control illegal file sharing, according to Lauren Rotman, Internet2's media-relations manager. Internet2 does not condone piracy, Ms. Rotman said in an e-mail interview. But campus officials, not Internet2 administrators, are "in the best position to take responsibility for network issues that occur at the campus network level, including file sharing," she wrote.

As pressure mounted against i2hub, the network made an attempt to prove that it had legitimate applications, experimenting with features like a textbook exchange and a dating service. But the U.S. Supreme Court's June decision in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. -- which found that peer-to-peer networks could be held liable for acts of piracy if they "induced" the violations -- further compromised i2hub's legal standing. In September the recording industry sent cease-and-desist notices to seven peer-to-peer networks, including i2hub.

'Remember i2hub'

The Web site of i2hub, which once pseudonymously listed student representatives at over 30 different institutions, now simply reads "R.I.P."

Mr. Chang, the network's founder, declined to comment on the reason for i2hub's closure. But he said in an e-mail interview on Tuesday that i2hub was already being commemorated by its campus fans. "Students are hanging signs, painting campus boulders with 'Remember i2hub,' etc., across the country," he wrote.

The i2hub closure had more of a sense of finality to it than the shutdown of Grokster, the company which was at the center of the legal imbroglio over piracy. Grokster announced last week that it would no longer distribute its peer-to-peer software, although people who had already downloaded the software continue to use it to share files. But i2hub relied on a centralized router through which all users had to sign in. Mr. Chang has now disabled that router.

In a statement on the surrenders of i2hub and Groskter, the recording-industry trade group said it was "encouraged by the response of many of the illegal peer-to-peer sites to the Supreme Court's unanimous Grokster decision."

But the death of i2hub is not likely to have a significant impact on the volume of campus file swapping, according to some experts. At many institutions, students already use Direct Connect to operate intracampus hubs. They can also swap files using peer-to-peer software like BitTorrent, a popular open-source program. Since BitTorrent is a program, not a network, the entertainment industry has not tried to quash the software -- even though the industry has managed to shut down some Web sites that help BitTorrent users locate downloadable files.

"I basically don't think this will change the terms of the debate very much," said Jonathan L. Zittrain, a law professor who is co-director of Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

Even if i2hub officials could argue that their service wasn't intended as a way to breach copyright, they likely painted themselves into a corner by "so openly and notoriously publicizing themselves as a file-sharing network," Mr. Zittrain said.

• Grokster Shuts Down Service for Swapping Files and Settles With Entertainment Industries (11/18/2005)

• Recording and Movie Industries Sue Internet2 File Swappers (4/22/2005)

• Members of Congress Ask Internet2 to Crack Down on Online Piracy (12/10/2004)

• Students Use Internet2's High-Speed Research Network to Swap Songs and Movies (5/14/2004)