Slashdot Mirror
U of Wyoming Fingerprinting All P2P Traffic
mk2mk2 writes "News.com has an article on how they're preparing to shut down P2P sharing of copyrighted content: 'For months, the digital equivalent of a postal censor has been sorting through virtually all file-swapping traffic on the University of Wyoming's network, quietly noting every trade of an Eminem song or "Friends" episode.'" It's scary until one realizes that most P2P traffic isn't encrypted, like back when everyone still used telnet.
I don't think so. Everybody who is using the Net should be aware that he/she can be watched. P2P networks do not encrypt data because the idea behind it is to share. If you want to find out who is sharing files you don't have to monitor the traffic. You can just join the party :)
It means that no encryption would help. If you share your copyrighted material you can be watched by the RIAA and their friends.
I don't personally think it's dangerous for the p2p users (there are too many of them out there) but it's good to know
barwil
If monitoring and blocking tools were widely introduced, new software programs could easily develop ways to encrypt or scramble the data in transmission in order to make it unrecognizable by Audible Magic's tools or other databases.
.jpg of astronomical images, or pass it through a filter that makes it look like bad poetry, or make it a self-inflating-decrypting executable. You simply cannot write a program that will automatically filter all content, without simply denying all communication.
Encryption is just the tip of the iceberg. I can easily compress and encrypt any file, then slap on a header that claims it's a benign
Its a joke, but shit like that actually costs MORE money than the stupid music.
People downloading good quality TV shows and movies are probably using orders of magnitude more bandwidth than people downloading many, many more songs.
To provide more empirical data to the other reply, Rutgers University's policy is to allow 2GB over any 7 day period downloading, and 512MB over any 7 day period uploading. This makes it pretty much impossible to serve anything but small files (they but the dorms into private address space last year as well), but allows enough room to get most things done on the internet, legit or illegal. And no, it doesn't matter if you spent your 2GB downloading Linux ISOs. The policy is meant to save bandwidth, not stop piracy.
If you exceed the limit, you cannot access the internet for a week. University resources may still be accessed, which allows for basic internet access through X or port forwarding, etc.
Generally, the majority of campus internet traffic these days is related to file sharing. Almost every colleges and university in the States has had to employ some method for dealing with this, from governing bandwidth distribution to simply upgrading infrastructure. Curbing the distribution of copyrighted data is not just about folding to the RIAA ... it's a pragmatic solution to a huge problem.
Read the article buddy. They did do that, that what the Packeteer program was for. But the problem was that the programs and the students themselved were finding ways around it.
Kazza started hopping ports, very had to throttle the ports then. Also the students found ways to get around this, like httptunnels. Or the one I used at UW. I had a work machine that was unthrottled, so I setup a Socks server on my machine at work(I worked for the Network team at UW) and tunneled all my traffic though that. Worked great, expecially since all the other traffic was slow
I know now that they are having such a problem with bandwidth that internet access in the dorms is slow for anyone and anything you just can block a couple of ports and call it good.
Acutally it's not the Music that Brad Thomas and UW is worried about. It's the bandwidth. I belive UW only has one 155mbit ATM link to the net. This link is shared with voice, video, and remote backups. When I was working for brad thomas he was having paying people complain about video being choppy so something had to be done. Now with ports jumping all around the place it is harder to find p2p programs which have a sponge effect on the outpound pipe.
Some others have already replied to this, but I'm going to reply too anyway, just because it gives me the warm fuzzies to do so.
And sorry, you're wrong on both counts, but thanks for playing along anyway.
I won't swear to this for all 50 states, but I know for a fact that in both Indiana (where I currently live) and Kentucky (where I used to live), if you're talking to me on my phone line, I can legally record that call any stinking time I want to, whether you know I'm recording or not. And which one of us originated the call is irrelevant. And if you come over to my house and use my phone to call your Aunt Bertha, I can still legally record it without either of you knowing it.
And a company can listen in on, and record, any conversation they want, so long as the policy that they are doing so is spelled out to the employees beforehand. They can also monitor what you do on the office computer, etc etc. And there are a number of court decisions affirming the rights of a company to do so.
I'll bet money that buried somewhere deep in that University of Wyoming Student Handbook there is a clause that says "its our network, we'll snoop it any damned time we want, and we'll block anything we want too", or words to that effect. If you don't like them snooping on you, then the solution is simple...don't use their network.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.