Slashdot Mirror
BitTorrent Inherently Illegal?
Nohbdy001 asks: "Today I received a letter from my university's network administration advising me that my network access would be terminated due to 'illegal P2P activity.' The P2P activity that the e-mail cited was BitTorrent and the file being transferred was an update to the Azureus BitTorrent client. The letter stated, 'Until the courts decide that student P2P activity is permitted we will continue to block this activity on our network,' implying that BitTorrent is inherently illegal. It seems such misunderstandings are common, but it is particularly frustrating when coming from people in the IT field. How can a student respond to such an accusation in order to defend the validity of BitTorrent and continue to benefit from its legitimate uses?"
A better letter to IT:
Dear IT Department,
I will discontinue using unauthorized P2P protocols on your network. I appologize if my usage of such protocols has caused any problem for your department of for the University.
From now on, I will only use allowed protocols, such as FTP and HTTP, to illegally download copyrighted material across your network.
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