a slightly trivial question

<p>...ok, maybe very trivial, but..I enjoy pirating music (arr!). Not that big a deal, but now that I know for sure I'm going to Rice, I'm curious..how strict are they on that kind of thing? I know it varies a lot by college--some colleges don't care, others you will get busted.</p>

<p>very easy here. if you want to be safe, you can use ourtunes or mytunes and that allows you to download music from people on your subnet (~15 people who live near you). you have unrestricted network access and can download any programs you want, unlike at other universities.</p>

<p>score...thanks.</p>

<p>The official rules can be found on IT's website (<a href="http://www.rice.edu/it/vpit/policy.html)%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.rice.edu/it/vpit/policy.html)&lt;/a>, but individual college networks may have different (stricter or laxer) policies. To my knowledge, Sid Rich doesn't block any ports or bust anyone for file sharing (at least I haven't had any trouble with it), but I can't speak for other colleges. </p>

<p>With regards to the subnet sreis mentioned, there are usually many more users per subnet (each college has two, so there's the potential for over 100 users per subnet). The question is more whether or not your classmates are sharing files on the network...</p>

<p>well then i suppose subnet is not the right name since you cannot access near that many. i know that for my college it is the people around you because i get certain people around me and my friends in different areas get others around them. ive only seen one other college setup and it worked by floor (maybe 20 per floor). </p>

<p>no college will bust you. rice won't either. the policy is basically, if you get caught by RIAA then rice steps aside and you have to deal with it yourself. they aren't going to defend you or help you in any way.</p>

<p>The list of subnets I saw may have been old, but the point is that your main limitation is not number of computers but whether or not other people choose to share files or music. Usually there will be between 15-20 people (as sries said) that you can find by browsing the network who will be sharing music, software, movies, etc. And I wouldn't be too concerned about the university stopping you from using file sharing software.</p>

<p>On a similar note, some people have their computers set up to share files for their home networks--remember to disable that filesharing before you come here, unless you want other people to be able to access your machine.</p>

<p>well about whether people will choose to share, basically the people you want to share (the people with a lot of music) do share. these are the people who pirate music and have lots! most of the people i see have 20-30 gigs (one has over 100). there really arent people with a lot of music you would want who dont share. if you have experienced that, that is weird and doesnt make sense since theyre obviously pirating anyway. </p>

<p>all you have to do to share is enable it within itunes. you dont have to enable it anywhere else.</p>