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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?"
There is already legal precedent that P2P file sharing technology in itself is indeed legal. The Federal Appeals court that ruled was talking about networks like Morpheus and Grokster, but I would think the precedent set also applies to Bittorrent.
Here's a quote from a news story back in August:
"History has shown that time and market forces often provide equilibrium in balancing interests, whether the new technology be a player piano, a copier, a tape recorder, a video recorder, a personal computer, a karaoke machine, or an MP3 player," Thomas wrote. "Thus, it is prudent for courts to exercise caution before restructuring liability theories for the purpose of addressing specific market abuses, despite their apparent present magnitude."
Still, it's probably worth a polite note to the network administrator to request "clarification". State your case concisely (they're usually busy) and politely, and you may get lucky.
Check out my eclectic infosec blog at InfoSecPotpou
Many univeristies have an Ombudsman, whose job it is to talk advocate for those trapped in meaningless rules which do not or should not apply.
While not the most popular approach among Slashdoters, I highly recommend talking with your student government. Having served in one for way to long, I can tell you that most of them are just waiting for the perfect issue to come by to fight the Administration on. Network censorship is an easy issue to understand and they are obviously overreaching in their interpretations of "the Law."
The other important question is whether this is a state or private school. One poster said you had no recourse because it was "their network"... but such is not the case is if this is a state school. There may be certain laws that protect fair access. Again your student government can be a valuable source of information in this area.
-Sean
Only 120 characters... who can summarize their entire world understanding in 120 characters?!
Indeed. And I'll add, "their network, their rules".
But it can be challenged. Are you paying for net access? Is it included in the cost of whatever it is they charge you for your education?
Read their TOS. Find legal precedent where it says that p2p is not illegal. Collect signatures. Petition, campaign, etc.
Sounds like too much work? If you are not up to it then I advise you to get another ISP (and read the TOS before you sign).
If you decide to "walk around" their filters (tunneling, etc), don't complain later on if they somehow bust you. If you decide to simply ignore their warning and BT files anyway, notify them of your reasons for this. In writing. This way you get an air of legitimacy.
WARNING: The above is not legal advice and I'm not a lawyer. Talk to a lawyer and be prepared to walk into whatever situation you choose with your eyes wide open. You might not be doing anything illegal, but that's never stopped anybody from suing anyway.
No sig
Parent is not a troll. This is only done in some regions though. That is why not all users are affected. Just browse their forum at Broadband reports to confirm it yourself.
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/shaw
Chances are, the college has some form of student union, and student unions typically have access to legal counsel for when students get in trouble. I think this would qualify.
Token Bucket Packet Shaping
Users can accumulate bandwidth at a set rate, and can burst when they need to. However, if you try to hog the bandwidth, you get throttled down really fast. For normal users, they get the bandwidth they need, when they need it.
Our courts will never declare P2P use legal. It's not what they do. The legal system in this country is designed around the idea that things are legal and people are innocent until laws make it illegal or you are found guilty. You are allowed to have and use bitorrent under US law. It's a first amendment right. You are not allowed to share copyrighted works however. By way of analogy it's like having a printing press. It's ok to print your own work, or works you are contracted to print by the creator, or works in the public domain: as long as you dont start printing copies of things like The Lord of The Rings (which did, in fact, happen and resulted in legal fights and too many editions wandering around). You can share free software and your own works with the tool. So you have some recourse. And you might want to investigate whatever student and academic tribunals that you have at your disposal. This is a right worth protecting. I should mention that IANAL, but I do follow this closely as I did have articles censored in my High School paper, as well as other students at that school. So this is an issue near and dear to my heart. There are things to condsider... Is this a private or state run school? That may make a difference if this ever has to go to court. Usually the courts have taken the position that the school is publisher in student censorship cases and so has a right to edit the content of what they publish. So they might have the final right to say no to all P2P sharing on their network as it is "their" bandwidth. However, you have not committed a crime, right? And you might want to be careful on that count, it would be embarrassing to go before a student/faculty review board and claim you only use it for legit purposes...and then have them show that you spent 2 weeks downlaoding the entire series of Porky's movies. So, be careful. Or build your arguments carefully. You might want to contact the EFF or the ACLU, they both deal with this kind of thing. Finally, I expect your best course of action is to try to protect your rights at the academic level. Get an academic review board together and present your case that the tool and the file quoted are not illegal, and show the license that allows you to share the file. Allow the IT deparment to make their case that they have limited bandwidth and dont have time to determine which files are legal and which are not. Demonstrate that you are a responsible citizen, not a wily and witless media bandit and try to paint the IT dept's policy as draconian and possibly a violation of civil rights. Let the students and faculty decide and they will set policy for the school. Then you will know what kind of school you really go to. Or...host your files off-campus. ---Gorehog
I just read over every word of the IT license at the university where I work (which I'd take to be a pretty standard IT license), and nothing in there would allow them to do what happened to this student, and certainly is not a situation where one can "remove access to whatever they want whenever they want". The license requires the university to have a justification; there are a number of potential justifications, but none of them are "because we feel like it".
Given my university's license, about the closest argument that they could make would be "excessive personal use", but even that falls pretty flat on its face, given the letter that the student was sent and the actions that they were taking (downloading a software update) that led to the ban. They certainly weren't doing anything that would fall under violation of local, state, or federal laws; they weren't attempting to disrupt the network; they weren't attempting to invade anyone's privacy; etc. The student didn't fall under any category listed.
"It felt almost as good as stealing cars from grandma." -- Margaret Thatcher, probably.
The Halo fansite Halo.Bungie.Org has recently been using BitTorrent more and more often to distribute Halo videos to the community. Since the number of people downloading these vids has increased dramatically, BitTorrent has become necessary. There are plenty of legal applications for BitTorrent, and in this case, one that is necessary. The beauty of BitTorrent is (as i'm sure everyone here already knows) that the more people are downloading a file, the faster the download speeds are for everyone.
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