RIAA Targets LAN Filesharing at Universities

segphault writes "The RIAA has sent letters to 40 university presidents in 25 separate states informing them that students are engaging in filesharing on their campuses using the local network. Apparently, the RIAA wants to get universities to use filtering software on their networks to detect student filesharing. The RIAA did not disclose the methodology they used to determine that filesharing is occuring on those local networks, but it probably didn't involve asking permission. The article goes on to predict that the RIAA will eventually try to get the government to require use of anti-filesharing filtering technologies at universities."

Comments

Download while you still can

[IntelliAdmin]

Well it has been almost 6 years since Napster made its way into our lives? 6 Years Really? Lets look around and see what file sharing programs are left after the music and movie biz nuked the crap out of most of them.

1. Emule - This is one of the best we found out there. Hint (Search for server.met on google to update your server list)

2. Bearshare - Nice Gnutella client, lots of good hits

3. Limewire - Another Gnutella client. It even works on the Mac!

4. Shareaza - A beautiful Gnutella client with no spyware.

5. BitTorrent - Perfect for downloading movies, or that latest linux distro

6. KaZaa - Old favorite. Oh yea - Aussie users, you can't download - Yea Right!

7. Azureus - BitTorrent client that works on Mac, Linux, and Windows 8. Morpheus - Wow. They are still around? Wha happened!

9. Gnucleus - Open source Gnutella for you freeloading open source hippies out there - Yea I am talking about you

10. Napster - Ah, just put this one here to see if you are still reading, and I guess for shits and grins too

So there you have it folks. These are slim pickings. Get um while they still work!

Re:Download while you still can

[paulius_g]

I think that FrostWire deserves a mention aswell.

Essentially, it's a open source Limewire client which connects to Gnutella. It looks like the "pro" version of Limewire, so it's easy to use but it's free and open source.

Also, uTorrentdeserves a mention to be wicked-small and fast Torrent client for Windows. It only takes 155 KB of space!

Re:Download while you still can

[Schemat1c]

Correcty me if I'm wrong, but providing a link to a bitTorrent client doesn't really have anything to do with the article.

Okay I'll correcty you, it's called irony and it does have to do with the article. It illustrates the futility of the ongoing efforts of the RIAA to shut down file sharing by showing that options have actually increased which is the opposite of their intended results.

Lighten up a bit and laugh, trust me it will feel good.

Re:Download while you still can

[smidget2k4]

At a lot of uni's (mine included) they throttle BT for the sole reason that BT was taking up 50-60% of their total traffic for a while, so they throttle it down to make sure that it doesn't affect other uses. The Uni I go to has told me that they don't care less about what you download so long as the RIAA/MPAA/Microsoft doesn't come a-knockin' (some Microsoft fellas were watching a BT tracker and sent nice notices to two of my friends for downloading some MS Game, the Uni just said "don't do it again").

Re:Download while you still can

[Anonymous Coward]

The days of just being able to 'throttle' (Otherwise known as QoS or Quality of Service) based on port numbers is over. Almost any Cisco router (Even the older 2500 series) with the latest IOS can map QoS shaping (Throttling) to traffic signatures using a feature called NBAR (Network Based Application Recognition) then you can police traffic based on the signature of the payload (i.e. bittorrent, and many other P2P software) and set it down to 64Kbps (or lower) regardless of the port it is running on. Firewalls and routers are too smart now to play the 'I'll just use another port" game. I have set this up on MANY networks over the past 6 months. Hate to be the one to give bad news!!

Re:From a college student at an effected Universit

[ECELonghorn]

Stay in school kid. The phrase is "could not care less" not "could care less." If you were in school learning something you would have the critical thinking skills to not sound so stupid.

Strangely enough, I will say I thought about the expression when I typed it. I did a makeshift check on google...

• "could not care less" returns about 321,000 Results
• "could care less" returns about 5,480,000 Results

Check the hit count yourself; there really is that big of difference in results. I merely stuck with the most common usage.




Disclaimer: For anyone who did happen to think critically about what I said, I will qualify that "couldn't care less" returns about 3,270,000 Results. That was the original cliche phrase, which over time has evolved for whatever reason to omit the "not" part. The real bottom line is that both versions are almost equally used, and the average person could care less which version you pick. ;-)

Re:Seems Reasonable To Me

[Kjella]

The issue here is redistribution. I believe that copyright reform is in order, too, but don't try to cast it as a privacy issue when it isn't.

Enforcement of copyright is most certainly a privacy issue. For comparison, let's say you have a thief and an owner of physical goods. The owner can protect himself by simply protecting his own property. Now let's instead say you have two people that wish to swap copyrighted works, and a copyright holder. In order to know whether or not copyright infringement is happening, the copyright holder will need to know what the other two are doing. There have been several suggestions which basicly boil down to "Let me see everything you're doing, so I can be sure you're not infringing copyright", and that would be a gross violation of privacy. Checking out P2P nets for files people have shared publicly isn't a privacy issue though.