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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?"
Okay, first the good news. Proving that it's not illegal is relatively simple. If something isn't explicitly rendered illegal by an act of law, it's legal. Ask them to point out the law that states (and here's the key point) that use of this particular protocol is illegal for distribution of freeware that is also available for unfettered download via the web. They obviously won't be able to...problem solved?
Not exactly. This isn't just a matter of legal versus not legal, it's a question of whether it complies with their own Acceptable Use Policies. And depending on how those policies are written, Bittorrent may be a no-no anyways, "Because we say so." And I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that when they say "illegal," they don't mean 'criminal,' they mean 'against our own policies.' Good luck to you, man (or woman, whichever).
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Keep in mind that your definition of "legitimate use" may be quite different from theirs. University IT departments tend not to consider anything to be "legitimate" unless it has a valid academic application. Do you know of any academic uses for BitTorrent? Not trying to rain on your parade, but "I need it to download X" probably won't cut much ice.
Isn't it great how the music and movie industries can scare universities into policing their laws for them with little more than a few spot searches?
Copping an attitude against the IT department is the quickest way to get yourself banned from the University's IP domain. If you speak to them reasonably, they're more likely to listen. But if you go about spouting arrogant gibberish like "you might as well ban HTTP traffic" or "the student seeking a transfer to a more competently run University", then you're just asking for it. Don't bite the hand that gives you free internet access. Believe me -- I speak from experience.
My digital rights don't need management.
He also has no reason to give up his rights to privacy. You don't let the cops in to search your house and thumb print you when you did nothing illegal. So why would it be any different if you get caught using your PC legally?
To the parent: whatever you do. DO NOT give up your rights to privacy to get your net connection back. No matter if you did nothing illegal. If you give up your privacy, then you justify it to the administration that it is ok for them to do the same thing to other students.
Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
Bandwidth considerations and legal issues are very different things. You can always limit the bandwidth that's allocated for p2p application in your network. But if RIAA decides to sue the university for huge sums of money it's in for a financial burn. The cost of the legal battle in itself is enough to deter almost any institution.
Of course I agree that universities should not censor information, especially not in such unclever ways as declaring a protocol illegal. But I can understand why some universities have to kneel before the commerical powers that be.
The power of Christ compiles you!
The quote from the letter shows that the university is clearly blowing smoke and either did not talk to their legal department, or if they did, they ought to fire their lawyers. Although you sometimes have to wonder about the sanity of the US legal system, there is still a basic principle that something is legal unless it is determined to be illegal. Therefore, courts do not have to rule P2P activity as legal before you can engage in that activity. Even pending litigations do not constitute that P2P activity is currently illegal (unless you break the law using the P2P stuff).
Also, it is very unlikely that any court would rule specifically on student P2P activity. Students are strange animals, but in general rulings like this would apply to everyone, not just to students.
They are obviously playing on threatening people, and hiding behind vague statements in an effort to simply avoid the entire risk of people potentially using P2P technology to download (or upload) illegal materials. I'd personally recommand replying back to the university, explaining your legal use of P2P, and explaining that their letter seems to be based on some flawed assumptions, both legally and factually.
But do not expect to win unless you really want to fight this desperately. It's their network and though you pay tuition and all that, it is still their network, and so they get to decide what goes, whether it makes sense or not.
I did indeed send a reply back citing several legitimate uses (linux ISOs, legal large multimedia etc...). After which, I agreed to suspend my BitTorrent usage temporarily until the issue was resolved. However, the reply I received seemed less than understanding. Aside from being thanked for discontinuing my use of BT, I was told that what I was doing was potentially dagerous. To quote part of the e-mail: "I think the issue is potentially dangerous for you and the university. Thanks for suspending BitTorrent."
Which is why I bring the question to the community. Obviously using BT for legit purposes is not anymore dangerous than, say, browsing the web.
I got a note in my box from the (local western Pennsylvania) LUG, which describes a talk from a state trooper who said that wardriving was illegal. After years of debunking, talking nicely to less-informed journalists, and even having an FBI agents on video say otherwise, there is still a lack of understanding.
I heard at my last contract that they didn't use SSH because it was "inherently insecure." They used telnet instead.
Best thing to do, is be patient, try to educate the uninformed, and convince others to do the same.
Just don't get too angry, or they won't want to listen to you in the first place.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Well, that's correct. But he has of course been wrongly accused of doing something illegal. That's slanderous, and illegal in itself.
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
Why is that any more absurd than blocking something such as BitTorrent, especially as BitTorrent's legitimate applications are increasing?
Color me naive, but I never realized BitTorrent had a following of pirates until recently. I always saw it billed as a way to grab large files (e.g. Linux ISOs) in a lot less time than HTTP or FTP transfers. In fact that is the only thing I ever use it for. To see organizations ban or restrict it pisses me off.
Fortunately, the content industries seem to be taking a halfway correct approach: find people violating copyright using a technology, and prosecute those people. Even if BitTorrent gets a bad reputation, there are enough of us using it legitimately that 1) we won't go to jail and 2) BitTorrent will still have a legitimate user base and stay alive (thank you, OSS!).
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
The file you have is legal and legally distributed. Period. If they wish to limit your free speech rights on legal speech, that is a first ammendment issue and should be dealt with in a separate court battle.
If you can find a lawyer to write a letter to that effect for you, it might get their attention. I'm sure you could find a classmate whose parent relative or family friend is a lawyer willing to put a note like that under his/her firm's name. No explict threats -- just a letter from a lawyer.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
working in the IT department at a MAJOR U.S. college has taught me a few things. One of them is: you never know what you agreed to. We have a security policy that is roughly 50 pages, and much like EULAs, wether you read it or not, you agree to its terms by using said system. (especially since our school has a user id/password process to get on the networks, and a special housing policy that must be signed.) and basicly in there it says that they can remove access to whatever they want whenever they want, and they can tell you want you cant and cant do at any time. now considering this is outlined in the policy you are agreeing to, i think all other legal precidence goes away. If the school pays the bills and offers the service free, and ESPECIALLY if they have you sign something acknowledging what they can/cant do, they can close anything they want and youre basicly shit out of luck. IANAL. my 2 cents.
So here's what you should do:
Get together a cabal of linux (or *BSD or whatever) users when a new release comes out. Instead of using bittorrent, you arrange for the whole cabal to fire up http downloads of the ISOs simultaneously. This will drag the university net to a crawl.
When they hit you with a complaint, you nicely explain that you would have used bittorent for the downloads, which would have created only 1% of the load. But the administration has decreed that, if you do that, you'll be treated as criminals, so you didn't.
Also, it helps if you can bring up class- or job-related reasons that you were doing the downloads. If it's required for a class, they can't very well fault you for downloading it from the public repositories.
It might be fun if you could find a bittorrent source for something like the next big MS Service Pack, and arrange for a whole flock of Windows users to attempt to download it at the same time. This will really confuse the dummies in the U's admin. They can't very well object to people installing security stuff in Windows. And if you can make it clear that bittorrent would have greatly lessened the network load if not for their dumb ban on its use, maybe the idea will start to get through their thick skulls.
After all, bittorrent is merely a way to make copying big, popular files a lot faster and a lighter network load. It isn't restricted to just illegal copies; it works just as well for files that it is legal for you to download.
If you can pull it off, let us know how it works.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.