October 23, 2008
Internet Bans Greet Illegal File Sharers at Bowling Green State U.
Students who share files illegally won’t be able to do so for long at Bowling Green State University.
This month the university started blocking the Internet connections of students caught downloading copyrighted files on peer-to-peer programs like Limewire, BitTorrent, and Gnutella, The BG News, the university’s student newspaper, reported this week. For first-time offenders, the suspension lasts 24 hours. For second and third violations, it increases to two weeks and the rest of the semester, respectively.
Bowling Green announced the new policy in e-mail messages and fliers, the campus paper said, but some students were taken aback by their Internet bans.
“Lots were upset and yelling obscenities at first, but now a lot have realized what they were doing was illegal and have removed the programs,” Jordan Jones, a computer consultant at the university, told the newspaper.
Technology officials hope the policy will serve as a deterrent. Last year Bowling Green received 658 cease-and-desist notices from the Recording Industry Association of America, and as of last week, a program called CopySense had flagged 191 computers on the campus network, according to Matt Haschak, the university’s director of information security. (CopySense works by matching digital signatures of copyrighted files to downloads on the campus network.)
Technology officials from various universities, meeting in Los Angeles this week for the annual Internet Entertainment Workshop, wondered why they should allow peer-to-peer programs on their networks at all, when they’re used mostly for Linux downloads, World of Warcraft updates, and illegal file sharing. —Sara Lipka
Posted on Thursday October 23, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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“wondered why they should allow peer-to-peer programs on their networks at all, when they’re used mostly for Linux downloads, World of Warcraft updates, and illegal file sharing”
Um, maybe because the last two are legal? If university’s want to try and filter illegal file sharing (the very definition of an arms race where the university will spend ever increasing amounts of money), that is fine. But it is a very slippery slope to start blocking legal activities just because they don’t like the effect on the network.
— Kyle Johnson Oct 23, 02:30 PM #
Linux is an Operating System — students in computer science programs may well be required to download it.
— Linux user Oct 23, 02:50 PM #
Dear Sara,
Please note the number of copyright warnings and notifications is irrelevant, because the method for determination of real ‘downloads’ vs. participants on a sharing network (e.g. a ‘torrent’) is spurious. This examples reminds me of the people who are paid to get voters registered: fake voters get registered. Thus, even printers and copiers are detected as copyright violators. See: http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/uwcse_dmca_tr.pdf
Peer to peer (P2P) technologies are highly efficient for distributing software, and moving huge chunks of data around. I question if your last paragraph refers to the opinion of persons in an administrative capacity or those techology professionals who see the ‘baby and bathwater’ problem this presents to universities.
The universities that ban P2P are taking on a tit-for-tat technology solution for a much broader problem- which will not really go away, it is just delayed, until new utilities are available to circumvent the controls of today.
Sara, I recommend you cover the Educause conference next week learn the opinion of those who are, “technology officials with various universities…”
— Lux Oct 23, 04:32 PM #
Interestingly, students still have access to electric lights after dark, even though they can be used to read books that were loaned to the student in violation of copyright.
— curtis Oct 23, 05:29 PM #
And you thought Big Brother was dead!
— gregS Oct 23, 05:51 PM #
The few cases where legitimate files need P2P privileges can be excepted. But most know that the vast amounts of music and movie files zipping to and from our networks is commonplace. Bowling Green is doing what most of us should…monitor the traffic and ding those who are doing it. It’s responsible computing.
— cry me a river Oct 24, 07:53 AM #
At the University of Southern Maine our first offense is two weeks of lost network access. The second offense is a semester off the network and the third is a lifetime ban. The two weeks off the network is coupled with an educational sanction oin illegal downloading/uploading. We feel that this is a small price to pay compared to the cost of the pre-litigation and lawsuit tactics that the RIAA is handing out to students
— Stephen Nelson Oct 24, 09:45 AM #
There are two issues here: illegal file sharing and network usage.
It is arguably within a school’s purview to decide whether or not it wants to block illegal activity. One might think that a community of scholars who insist on appropriate recognition of their own work might have some sympathy for musicians and software designers who would like appropriate recognition for their own.
But a school has no obligation to provide unlimited free bandwidth to students for any and all purposes. Those servers and IT staff cost us. Let students who want to do lots of downloading go off-campus and pay for network access like most people have to do. Maybe there is a business opportunity here — off-campus internet connection centers (think Kinko’s). Or, since network administrators can apparently identify heavy downloaders, perhaps we should charge heavy users for their heavy use. That’s not censorship — it’s just getting those who use the service pay for the service, like paying for printing in the library. Schools shouldn’t have to subsidize any and every use of their networks, especially since there is reason to suspect that much file sharing is extraneous to the university’s core mission. (One might argue that substantial use of World of Warcraft by students who lack time to attend class may be contrary to that mission. Students are, of course, free to do what that want, but the costs of their doing so can reasonably passed along to them.)
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— jeremy Oct 24, 04:52 PM #
Blanket p2p bans are overkill. Issue download caps if cost is a factor, but blocking IP ranges does not block the activity of IT-sophisticated students, the ones who are more likely to engage in massive filesharing.
And what’s this with blocking World of Warcraft updates? Last I heard, computer gaming was legal.
Educational institutions bowing to the political pressure wielded by the RIAA are disgusting. If the RIAA wants to issue subpoenas to people based on information they gleaned on their own, that’s one thing. But universities caving and submitting detailed reports of their students’ network activity is truly sickening.
I’m glad I no longer attend college and can download whatever I want, whenever I want, on my DSL connection. Universities should make this option available for students if they are going to be policing the connections like unsolicited community watchdogs. Yes, it is the college’s internet connection. But giving on campus students the choice to opt-out of this Patriot Act-esque monitoring (and pay an external internet carrier instead of the college) should be a no-brainer. When I was in school there was no way to access any internet but the campus internet when I lived in a dorm.
Students need to be given the choice NOT to be inspected with fine-toothed big brother combs. Going without an internet connection is not optional in the tech age in which we live. The choice should not have to be between no internet and internet where every move you make is reported to an agency known for bullying tactics.
— Rachel Oct 27, 01:17 PM #