U of Wyoming Fingerprinting All P2P Traffic 533
mk2mk2 writes "News.com has an article on how they're preparing to shut down P2P sharing of copyrighted content: 'For months, the digital equivalent of a postal censor has been sorting through virtually all file-swapping traffic on the University of Wyoming's network, quietly noting every trade of an Eminem song or "Friends" episode.'" It's scary until one realizes that most P2P traffic isn't encrypted, like back when everyone still used telnet.
Eh? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Eh? (Score:2, Redundant)
Finally, innovations among peer-to-peer software developers themselves could limit the use of the monitoring tools. Most file-swapping communications today are unencrypted, or transmitted relatively openly over the Net. If monitoring and blocking tools were widely introduced, new software programs could easily develop ways to encrypt or scramble the data in transmission in order to make it unrecognizable by Audible Magic's tools or other databases.
"Clearly that's a problem," said Ikezoye, adding that his company still would have markets in this eventuality. "It's always a concern, particularly from private corporations, to have encrypted data flowing out of your network. We definitely see an opportunity in corporations."
Re:Eh? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Eh? (Score:3, Funny)
Didn't someone already do this - put up a website with "My Node's Most Embarassing Gnutella Queries" that their node had received?
192.168.0.1 - [rDNS] - goat pr0n
192.168.0.1 - [rDNS] - goatse pr0n
192.168.0.1 - [rDNS] - n00d g0at
(Fun project - See BOFH write a fake Gnutella server that, when certain keywords are tripped, returns a sample HTML file that attempts to load an IMG SRC pointing to "www.fbi.gov/[luser's/search/terms].jpg". See BOFH run fake server in background. See BOFH laugh :)
Re:Eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Any encryption protocol worth it's salt (ie generally not those propriatary/secret protocols) is protected against this. Eg SSL or SSH which you can snoop all you want, but there's never a key sent in clear text across the channel. Neither is there any key to find in the source. Instead a key is agreed upon by the clients as they connect, but using "one way functions" which are hard and/or practically impossible to crack. You can also use public key encryption with it to add even more security and authentication to the system.
That's why he suggested that you should read about SSL. A cheap way is to just look at the relevant RFC, although it may be a bit complex if you don't have any experience in number theory. Another hint could be look at crypto sites such as Bruce Schneier's crypto-gram (counterpane.com [counterpane.com]).
In any case, if you use a well tested protocol and implement it correctly (not always trivial) then the system will be secure.
There's always another way... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:There's always another way... (Score:3, Insightful)
Daniel
Re:There's always another way... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:There's always another way... (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember, as long as it's on their network, they can do whatever they want with it. You may not like it, but that's the way it works.
Re:There's always another way... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There's always another way... (Score:3, Informative)
Actually they probably can't do that. At least not without some pretty extreme hardware.
Typically you get to a point where you have to use RAM buffers to save data and then have multiple network listeners which swap so they can save the data to disk. If you have a large amount of traffic you soon get to a point where you can't store all data.
But sure, it's their network, so they can do what they want. Just as long as they don't mind me using encrypted channels.
Re:There's always another way... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:There's always another way... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course it is kinda hard to find the sites when there isn't a functioning search engine.
oh my! (Score:4, Funny)
Forget "Friends" (Score:2, Funny)
I'd been *wondering* when someone was going to finally do something about his lousy music! U of W's spearheading a regular cultural revolution!
Re:oh my! (Score:5, Informative)
People downloading good quality TV shows and movies are probably using orders of magnitude more bandwidth than people downloading many, many more songs.
Re:oh my! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:oh my! (girls) (Score:5, Insightful)
It's different if they just want to conserve some bandwidth, but if they are just trying to stop the distribution of copyrighted works, then that sounds like an impossible task. Who owns the copyright on "Redhead Sticking a Cucumber up her Ass" ?
--sex [slashdot.org]
Re:oh my! (girls) (Score:3, Informative)
Re:oh my! (girls) (Score:5, Funny)
Scary until? (Score:4, Insightful)
I suppose you could claim "spoofed ip"
Re:Scary until? (Score:2, Funny)
Well, heres the new testbed for freenet. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Well, heres the new testbed for freenet. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Well, heres the new testbed for freenet. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well, heres the new testbed for freenet. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Well, heres the new testbed for freenet. (Score:3, Interesting)
Now a public phone company doesn't have that right, because it's not in their TOS, and if they put it in their TOS, somebody would fight it as being an illegal invasion of privacy. The Internet, and a University network at large aren't seen as a common enough utility, that is necessary for living in the current society to warrent those kinds of protections yet. At some point the Internet might get that kind of protection. However, given the proliferation of networks, my guess is that it will be a market driven thing. Phone companies are monopolies, so they have a lot more regulation then a University network ever will, because you can always get network access from a dozen other places if you don't like the terms of service the University has. A University is also a lot like a place of business. My company has the right to monitor everything I do on their equipment. All their wires, all their harddrives are fair game for them to search. It's a term of my employment. They also own all of the things I do on their computers that's in my IP agreement. They also can restrict my free speech because I signed an NDA agreeing that as a term of my employment, I can't talk about certain areas of expertise I have to other companies.
Technically, you don't need his permission to do record his conversation, you just have to tell him you are doing it (it's subtle, but there's a difference, he doesn't have to concede it's okay, he merely has to hear you say it's the case). If he continues to use the phone, I don't believe there is anything illegal about it.
Kirby
Re:Well, heres the new testbed for freenet. (Score:4, Informative)
And sorry, you're wrong on both counts, but thanks for playing along anyway.
I won't swear to this for all 50 states, but I know for a fact that in both Indiana (where I currently live) and Kentucky (where I used to live), if you're talking to me on my phone line, I can legally record that call any stinking time I want to, whether you know I'm recording or not. And which one of us originated the call is irrelevant. And if you come over to my house and use my phone to call your Aunt Bertha, I can still legally record it without either of you knowing it.
And a company can listen in on, and record, any conversation they want, so long as the policy that they are doing so is spelled out to the employees beforehand. They can also monitor what you do on the office computer, etc etc. And there are a number of court decisions affirming the rights of a company to do so.
I'll bet money that buried somewhere deep in that University of Wyoming Student Handbook there is a clause that says "its our network, we'll snoop it any damned time we want, and we'll block anything we want too", or words to that effect. If you don't like them snooping on you, then the solution is simple...don't use their network.
Re:Well, heres the new testbed for freenet. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's where the power hungry politicians in the University world have it wrong. The students own the network, not the administrators. The students have paid for the network and are paying the administrators to operate the school. I really am quite confused as to who the heck some of these people think they are, implementing measures like this. It would be like hanging from a rope over a gorge and cutting the rope because it's violating copyright law. I have a feeling that once the whole student body catches wind of a P2P crackdown on campus that there will be massive protests and possibly riots. Like the incident at Michigan State University when the University decided to ban alcohol on campus. The whole freaking place went to hell, rioting on campus, cars on fire, etc. I think the reason that we are not hearing more opposition from the people who pay for the networks is probably the same reason that most of the computers that these people use leave port 139 open.
Let the police do their job and RIAA push the police to do a harder job. The university administrators should stay the heck out of it unless there would be legal implications for the university. Afterall, the administrators are there to make the university a better place for the students, not for the RIAA.
Uh no (Score:3, Informative)
And no there won't be riots. Not as many students think stealing someone else's intellectual property is as important as being able to get your class mate drunk enough to date rape her.
Re:Well, heres the new testbed for freenet. (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude you are so off base you should be modded a funny. (Mods, please read parent before modding me)
The point is, it's THEIR network. It's not the student network, it's not the taxpayers network, it's not even the Alumni's network. It belongs to the University plain and simple. University is for research, not d/l pr0n or sharing eminem. Students are given access to the internet in their dorm rooms to assist them with their studies.
If I caught you running a sniffer on my network, I would yank that patch cord leading up to your room so fast it would make a "whooosh" sound like a whip cracking in the air.
Re:Well, heres the new testbed for freenet. (Score:5, Interesting)
The point is, it's THEIR network. It's not the student network, it's not the taxpayers network, it's not even the Alumni's network. It belongs to the University plain and simple. University is for research, not d/l pr0n or sharing eminem. Students are given access to the internet in their dorm rooms to assist them with their studies.
That certainly is an interesting point. Please allow me to offer a counter point.
Universities are there for learning and growth of their students and faculty. They are not all about books and studying and stuff like that. Universities sponsor football -- why? Student unions and governments -- why? Those are extracurricular activities that help the students grow as people, round them out, etc. Ever meet someone in real life who thought university was there for books and no socialization? I've met one, and let me tell you, communicating to get to the immense book-smarts was tough, and he was not prone to creative, reasonably practical ideas.
The university network is there primarily for learning, but there should be a reasonable amount of respect for personal growth and exploration. I'm not sure I want to argue that pirating friends episodes and pornography are aiding that pursuit, but maybe they are. The university should make a reasonable effort to allow the students to do explore their freedoms and help enforce the law when subpoenaed to do so. I think it can easily be argued that the downloading of friends episodes leads one to think about copyrights and what use they have in the real world. The exploration of pornogrpahy, it can be argued, helps educate the "consumer" what he (or she) thinks about the impact on the models as individuals.
My education was, believe it or not, furthered by playing with a little known Unix clone named "Linux". It wasn't supported on my campus network, and there were times when I used bandwidth for this side project that did not contribute directly to my studies, but I believe it was worthwhile. I played Doom over Kali, and ended up learning something about network latencies and bandwidths. Completely illegal on the campus network, I even ran a password logger for some time -- this turned out to be a very powerful lesson in cryptography and network security. I did not have the money to set up a legitimate private network to explore these issues, but this was education that helped me become the person that I am.
I believe that university and college dorms are there, not for the exclusive pursuits of scheduled academia, but for the students to explore their own educations, as they pertain or do not pertain to their class schedules.
Re:Well, heres the new testbed for freenet. (Score:3, Funny)
Privacy (Score:4, Insightful)
so... (Score:2)
Re:so... (Score:2)
Re:Privacy (Score:2)
I, for one, agree with you. Whether it's your university or your ISP, you're using their network, you follow their rules, and they're allowed to enforce it however they want, including sniffing your traffic. Don't like it? Find a new provider or use encryption.
Re:Privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes there is. Just like there is if you're living in someone else's house, aka, an apartment. At my school students have to pay for their internet access. This makes the school an ISP. As a business providing a service and can't just "do whatever they want".
Do you own your phonelines? Is it okay with you if the phone company records every conversation you make to check for illegal activities? They are their phone lines you know, you have no easonable expectation of privacy using them. Too bad, I guess you should have encrypted all your phone calls.
One of these days, an ISP or school will get sued for pulling this shit. Network traffic can contain some very personal information. AFAIK I have never signed anything that would let my isp monitor ALL my traffic continuously. Most service contracts suggest that the may be some montioring to ensure network performance, but it would be pretty damn easy to prove that this was not what they we doing if they were continuously monitoring my traffic for an extended period of time.
Of course, the real solution is to encrypt your traffic. Then you get to have your ISP prosecued for a serious crime (at least much more serious than copyright violation) if they do manage to break the encryption.
Re:Privacy (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny, ensuring network performance is kinda what university monitoring of traffic is about, isn't it? How do you think QoS or packet-shaping works?
The interesting question was when someone pointed out that it's not your network unless you laid the fiber yourself. I think there'll be some very interesting cases in the next few years with regards to setting up wireless access points. A wireless mesh network, in which 100, 1000, or 10,000 users allow their boxen to be used as access points, is indeed one in which the users "own the pipe".
At 100 users, odds are that "someone else" owns the pipe where stuff eventually goes through. (Like your University owning the pipes through which much of your dorm's P2P traffic eventually goes.)
At 10,000 users, that's not necessarily so. A mesh network composed of 10,000 Freenet nodes scattered throughout a city might be able to cache Titney Spears' "OopsYouGotFuckedbyRIAAAgain.mp3" within itself -- and thus the "pipes" through which the MP3z flow are indeed owned by the users doing the flowing.
Both cases are clearly copyright infringement - but the latter case would be much more interesting from a legal perspective - RIAA has the right to ask the University to sniff its traffic, but do they have the right to sniff your traffic?
(The Feds, of course, suffer from no such restriction, but that's because we've given them the authority to enforce the law and laid down rules that govern when/what/who they can sniff. But unlike the Feds, RIAA has no more authority to sniff than you or I do. Fuck 'em :-)
Re:Privacy (Score:2)
Commendable, but... (Score:2)
Of course this is a good endeavor to stop piracy, but the question is: Even after they successfully identify each user, can they effectively shut down each of the machine? They can do it for their student, and probably *AA will jump in for the big-brotherism. But can they do it for the rest of the world? I think not.
So, if they do this again -- it's like Napster story once again. New, better P2P softwares will spring up and it's more resilient and equipped with military strength encryption and stuff, which will in turn annul their previous effort.
OK, so... (Score:2)
Re:OK, so... (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
a few arrests in the States... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:a few arrests in the States... (Score:2)
Won't work! (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds to me like this company took a copy of Snort, set up a few rules for the "fingerprints" and sold it to the University of Wisconsin. What a waste of money!
Wyoming Not Wisconsin. (Score:3, Insightful)
That won't work either (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, if I went to that university, I wouldn't want my research slowed down because some freshmen was trying to download Friends episodes.
Re:Won't work! (Score:5, Insightful)
If administrators can't distinguish "good" traffic from "bad" traffic, they will have no choice but to simply remove any access at all to the Internet from the problem subnets, namely dorms.
So, encrypt the traffic. Make it so that nobody can tell what's inside the stream. That's dandy. But if P2P usage makes it such that researchers can't get the resources or bandwidth do actually do their work or are significantly impacted (the argument of whether researchers are doing anything more than reading Slashdot or Dilbert is for a separate post), even if the traffic isn't recognized as P2P per se, you can bet that this will be the next step.
As if it's not bad enough (Score:2, Funny)
The solution (Score:2)
Its that goddamned freedom and liberty again .... (Score:4, Insightful)
You know - like invent a decentralized p2p network and trade music files with it
Telnet (Score:5, Funny)
It's been like
Those were the days.
Is it scarry ? (Score:3, Informative)
How many bits before you own something ... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's pretty obvious you can't copyright a length 1 bit string, so how many bits do you need before you own it and I don't? 10? 100? 10,000? I know you can't trademark a number, can you coprright one?
Wyoming....Leading the way???? hahahahahaha (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps with this 'fingerprinting' technology the big boys can just charge us the ($.50/$1/whatever) a song they want from us anyways? Instant delivery system for them that they didn't even have to build!
This whole deal about copyrighted material somehow reminds me of the war-on-drugs... Making criminals of all the users didn't work there... Trying to stop the supplies at the street level didn't work either. The only thing that will work is legalizing the controlled substance... then taxing the hell out of it... hehee
"Isn't" encrypted, or is? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the notion of privacy in our communications is going to be utterly discarded, I rather wish the school had elected to eavesdrop on every phone call made on campus to help catch thieves, domestic abusers and other violent criminals, etc.
There are plenty of people who say what goes on the internet shouldn't be private; that there's no expectation of privacy there. I guess we'll get into this issue a bit on this topic. Just please don't forget to have a little imagination. This is all new. We're making the rules as we go along. Sometimes I think if the phone had been invented last year there wouldn't be an expectation of privacy on phone calls either.
Remember this is a "private" institution doing this, i.e. not a law enforcement agency. Remember that just because they can write a fancy terms of service that authorizes them to do whatever they want with the network, it doesn't make their actions legitimate, let alone moral.
Finally, most interestingly, remember that Fasttrack (i.e. Kazaa, etc) is encrypted over the wire (see this link [levillage.org]). There's nothing saying that the whole thing won't be reverse-engineered and cracked sooner or later, but to my knowledge, that hasn't happened yet... of course, that could just be last I checked.
Re:"Isn't" encrypted, or is? (Score:2)
But on the internet, it's very easy to make sure that only you and the guy on the other end can actually read what you send over the wire. Even if your network is totally insecure, and has the local police, the FBI, the Secret Service, and the NSA (although maybe not the NSA...) all watching over it, you can still use heavy-duty, free crypto and they can't get a thing. The fact that a lot of big internet applications don't use it by default it a big failing that we should make a big deal about. But still, you can use SSH instead of telnet, PGP your e-mail, use https when the other end supports it and use a secure proxy when it doesn't.
Do I do these things? Not always. But I also don't expect any of the traffic I send or recieve without them to be really private.
Isn't this illegal? (Score:2)
Re:Isn't this illegal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Uh... no (Score:3, Insightful)
-Matt
Re:Isn't this illegal? (Score:2)
Good - Will Spur Dev of Encrypted P2p (Score:2)
giFT comes to mind for me for being the easiest to impliment this in, as it uses HTTP for all of its comms. Wrap it up in SSL, BAAAM, now it uses HTTPS.
KDX (Score:5, Informative)
One of it's advantages is that all the traffic is strongly wencrypted. Homepage is at http://www.haxial.com/main.html
Disadvantage being that the people responsible for it wouldn't know a user-interface if it bit them in the ass. It is customisable, but it doesn't match the host OS's GUI.
Over here in Blacksburg... (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead, there is an upload bandwith limit. Upload more than a CD's worth of data and you get put on the equivalent of a DSL line that you share with all the other big sharers. Manage to beat all your friends still and you get put on the equivalent of a 56k with the high distributors. Note that your download speed isn't affected, just uploading speed.
I think it's a much fairer system than being monitored...
Re:Over here in Blacksburg... (Score:2)
Great! keep up the good work. (Score:3)
Instead, there is an upload bandwith limit. Upload more than a CD's worth of data and you get put on the equivalent of a DSL line that you share with all the other big sharers. Manage to beat all your friends still and you get put on the equivalent of a 56k with the high distributors. Note that your download speed isn't affected, just uploading speed.
I think it's a much fairer system than being monitored...
Yeah! God knows we would not want anyone at a University to SHARE INFORMATION. That would make them pirates or teachers or sumthin. We also know that you can't incriment such a cap without monitoring and rembering network transactions. Good stuff you have there, almost as good as having no network at all.
Re:Great! keep up the good work. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Great! keep up the good work. (Score:3, Insightful)
impossibility (Score:3, Informative)
Encryption is just the tip of the iceberg. I can easily compress and encrypt any file, then slap on a header that claims it's a benign
Won't compression defeat this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, Joe Pirate simply
Exactly how would they then block the
Methinks WinZip is the Sharpie for this expensive DRM.
Re:Won't compression defeat this? (Score:3, Insightful)
If its watermarking, would transcoding it destroy the watermark?
Just an idea... (Score:2, Insightful)
Even if it was encrypted.. (Score:2)
Else it would be pretty worthless...
This is just silly. (Score:3, Interesting)
Youre going to wind up filtering everything but *porn*. I can't really see that being what they intended to do.
Better solutions! (Score:5, Interesting)
In one 24-hour period, for example, the most popular file traded using the Gnutella network was an MP3 by rap artist "Big Tymers," which passed the network monitor 188 times.
The students should really set up their own, internal P2P network. This would put less tax on the University's external bandwidth, downloads would be quicker, and, assuming it's restricted to local users, the RIAA couldn't really prove any wrongdoing. (Although their FUD generally scares universities enough.)
Universities are generally big enough to support a network on their own. They should.
Not just about copyrights (Score:3, Informative)
Privacy IS an issue here (Score:5, Interesting)
Before some of our fellow slashdotters come up again with "They own the network": Yes, they do. But that does not grant them the right to monitor it continuosly and in detail.
Someone always owns a piece of infrastructure, be it an ISP, a University, the interstate authority or your 'landlord'. But they don't have the right to invade your privacy if you are using rented, leased or subscribed equipment. Imagine the owner of your apartment trying to monitor your living habits, to make sure "nothing fishy is going on in your apartment".
Network and telephone lines can transmit very private and sensitive information, and it is a serious crime to snoop that out. If you thought that was the right way, you're had too much time on corporate americas way of life. They are your customers, your contractors, if you like, but not only that, but living feeling humans that deserve to have a private life, one that's none of your business. You can imagine a thousand situations like this:
- You rented my car, why don't I have the right to monitor where you're driving, who you take with you and what roads you drive on?
- You rented my house. I claim the right to visit you whenever I deem it's necessary. And just to ensure, that my property is taken good care of and you don't hoard drugs there, I will make a full seizure every time I come.
-
I rented you my video camera, you've got to give me a copy of each recorded tape, so that you cannot film underage porn. Think of the children, my god!
-
And finally: I've given you Internet Access. Now that you can browse the web and do spiffy emailing, you must be utterly thankful to me. And since you are a student, you don't have any rights to complain, we will treat you as a slave and you have no private life. Be thankful, you even got a 'net connection and understand, that we have to make sure you don't do illegal things with it. We don't count the bytes, we don't have per-user quotas, we do the nasty GESTAPO stuff piling through all your traffic. If you complain, well, try another University.
Opening some other's letters is the same and I hope finally someone will punish the university for doing this.Let it happen, that on one incident, some very private information about a student is obtained that way and told the public to embarrass him. One lawsuit later, the U has lost 10 Million US$ for a settlement and the bandwitdh savings of 5 years are worth exactly nothing compared to this. Go ahead, wait till someone reacts. I'd do that.
Poison the database. (Score:3, Funny)
Heh... If a few of you do that, the database could be full of useless info in no time!
Reasons why this won't work (Score:3, Informative)
(of course, a way to get around the traffic hit would be to build a smaller, slightly less expensive internet just for the sniffer communications, but the costs for that would be pretty painful)
(Relating points 2 and 3 will mean the only thing the internet will be capable of anymore will be sniffer communication, but I suspect that would suit these guys)
Makes me hate my job at a University (Score:5, Interesting)
We have a limited connection to the internet, which is usually being eaten up by P2P traffic. Today, over an hour period, we had three students that used a total of 4G of traffic in an hour.
I don't care what the traffic is, but when legit work can't get done, such as our payroll system which uses SQL*Net across the WAN (bad idea to begin with, but that's a state bueracracy for you.) and their processes just aren't working, shit is gonna have to happen.
We blocked port 1214 (kaaza) and a week later the port switching version came out.
Right now we are facing the choice of either doing some severe draconian network policies or buyin a packeteer.
And how long will that work before the next fileswapping act runs with ssl over 443?
I feel for the students - it's something fun to do...hell, I remember downloading
Makes my life a pain in the ass - how to be nice and let legit stuff go on, allow some fun and experimenting to go on, at the same time "protect" the network and make sure it is available when need be.
Re:Makes me hate my job at a University (Score:3, Informative)
The Real Story here at UWYO (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Quoth (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Quoth (Score:3, Funny)
You misspelled "uptight".
Re:Quoth (Score:2)
Re:Quoth (Score:2)
Re:Quoth (Score:2)
If you read the article, you'll notice that they do.
I'd say that a better question is -- why the *hell* don't colleges have per-user quotas? Like, you can transfer at an uncapped rate for large_quantity_of_data/week, at which point you get capped to 2kbps. You can still do work, but P2P users will soon learn not to waste bandwidth, and to obtain files from machines on the *local* network as much as possible. That alleviates the cost issues and keeps everyone happy.
Re:Quoth (Score:2)
At Cornell, for example, if you transfer more than 27 GB over a 72 hour period (which, frankly, is insane...) they cap you to some small bandwidth amount for a period of time... Do it too many times, and they terminate your account.
Most other colleges have some similar system in effect where X traffic in Y period automatically makes your router rate-limit you.
Re:Quoth (Score:3, Informative)
If you exceed the limit, you cannot access the internet for a week. University resources may still be accessed, which allows for basic internet access through X or port forwarding, etc.
Re:Quoth (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems to me any easy way to bypass (or at least extend) quotas at the University level is good old sneakernet -- much like we got our music when I was in School back in the '80s. One would make friends and get to know who liked what -- you want Dead Kennedys talk to Cosmic John, need Billy Joel, talk to someone else. We would build our collections a cassette at a time.
Since CD burners are so common now, why not do the same thing? Pass around CD-Rs with .OGGs or .MP3s around the Dorm (or between classmates) -- instant portable 600MB of "bandwidth" per CD-R. Great way to build up a collection without worrying about sniffers or using up the bandwidth.
Re:Quoth (Score:3, Informative)
Kazza started hopping ports, very had to throttle the ports then. Also the students found ways to get around this, like httptunnels. Or the one I used at UW. I had a work machine that was unthrottled, so I setup a Socks server on my machine at work(I worked for the Network team at UW) and tunneled all my traffic though that. Worked great, expecially since all the other traffic was slow
I know now that they are having such a problem with bandwidth that internet access in the dorms is slow for anyone and anything you just can block a couple of ports and call it good.
Re:Quoth (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Quoth (Score:2)
For the university it may be a technical issue, but in reality it's a legal one.
It's killing two birds with one stone, and one of them didn't need killing.
Re:So how do they do it? (Score:2)
:)
Re:So how do they do it? (Score:2)
And no, the same laws that will be used against you if you are caught to use a program like DeCss will not be fairly applied against the RIAA if they decide to go after your encryption system.
Read the article! (Score:5, Insightful)
And many P2P users simply don't care in the least about their bandwidth usage -- they suck up as much as they can get. No effort to obtain a file from another computer on the local network (granted, most P2P software doesn't even support this). They simply expect mass amounts of bandwidth, and for other students' tutitions to subsidize their downloading.
I'd like to see per-user data transfer per week quotas, where users get capped to 2kBps or so for the rest of the week if they exhaust their quota.
We need to respect and uphold copyright laws (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:We need to respect and uphold copyright laws (Score:4, Funny)