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RIAA Cracks Down on Internet2 File Sharing
Daverd writes "Hundreds of students at 18 universities nation-wide have had lawsuits filed against them by the RIAA for filesharing over Internet2." The official RIAA Press Release and commentary at MSNBC is also available. From the article: "i2Hub has been seen as a safe haven, and what we wanted to do was puncture that misconception," said Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA. "This has been a subversion of the research purposes for which Internet2 was developed."
I'm sure the bribed/threateded/etc one of the I2 instutions to let them snoop traffic. What may be interesting is if someone chooses to fight these lawsuits. It may well be against the university's privacy policy to do what they did. I looked at ours, and letting any thrid party, except law enforcement with a warrant, monitor the network would be a violation.
Those ~5-8 mb files are like shooting BB's down an aircraft hanger!!
Seriously, if I had "Internet2" at my disposal, I could most certainly find something more productive (6 CD Linux install in a few seconds? Yes please.)or at the very least more illegal to do with it than download a lot of crappy music!
I'm too lazy to enter a sig. Hey wait a second! You tricked me!
Back in November of '04 the RIAA petitioned to become a member of the Internet2 community. I don't know if they ever got their own network connection, but I remember them asking for one.
Not necessarily. I don't see any reason why i2 couldn't be used to develop secure, anonymous, and impervious to lawsuit P2P networks, a lá freenet (but maybe with a more "gnutellish" interface). But then, architectural issues aside, I'm sure that no publicly funded research is undertaken for the sole purpose of copyright infringement. Here's hoping that there is other stuff on that hub that (legally) justifies its existence.
On a related note, anyone who hasn't read Lawrence Lessig's "Free Culture" and has strong oppinions on the topic of filesharing and copyrights owes it to themselves to read this wonderful book. It really gives alot of background to the debate, and puts to rest alot of myths that the major copyright owners would have you buy into. More info at Lessig.org.
I am a student at the University of Pittsburgh, and all traffic from residence halls, no matter what it is, is automatically routed over the Internet2 when it is to another university. We do not have an upload cap for this traffic. For all traffic to the "regular Internet", if a connection is made to us, our upload and download speed over that connection is limited to 500 bytes/second or slower. This makes tasks such as AIM Direct Connect useless, and even useful features such as SSH are almost too slow for use. However, any Internet2 traffic, even as an incoming connection to me, runs at several MB/sec upload and download (essentially the full 100mbps connection).
I2hub is used extensively here, and there has been no issues with bandwidth that I am aware of. If it was an issue, the university has shown they have the capabilities to put restrictions in place. Personally, I use i2hub to get legal files (such as Linux ISO images or the TV show that aired last night that I missed, though this is controversial) because the download speed is so fast.
This is not abusing the research network; rather, it is using a network with extreme amounts of bandwidth that would otherwise go unused.
Music, unlike diamonds, does not rely on a natural resource. I've yet to figure out why the hell people just don't switch to independent music. You'd be amazed at how good this type of music really is. You can go to a show for $0.00 to $10.00, RECORD it if you want, TRADE it at will usually, and the MAJORITY of the money goes to the artists!
The key here is that the MUSIC INDUSTRY is SUING the people IN COLLEGE who should simply REVOLUTIONIZE the industry! Go to your local jam band concerts, frequent the college shows, screw the big labels, use your own mind and broaden it. If the money goes independent, then so will the artists. And the artists who want to keep making sixty cents for every ten bucks their parent company makes can go right ahead. They're done getting my money.
i've heard rumors (note these are only rumors) that they have recruited students at various colleges to monitor file sharing networks, probably giving them access to the tools they use and probably bribing them as well.
please me, have no regrets.
I'm not doing all the work for you, click the link.
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