<p>What are college policies regarding downloading music, movies, and other files using their network?
Is it okay to have downloaded material that has been obtained at home or outside of the school?
For example, you already have downloaded material on your computer, iPod, cellphone, and you bring it to college?
Do they care? </p>
<p>Now what about Firefox's downloader helper. It downloads files that are streaming such as on YouTube. Is that SAFE?</p>
<p>What are these policies within the UC system? Is each UC different? A high ranked UC such as Berkeley? A low ranked UC such as Riverside?</p>
<p>You might want to get that out of your head. Hate to break it to you, but despite what high school kids might feel about prestige, almost no one in the UC system thinks that way.</p>
<p>Now, onto your questions:</p>
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<p>If it’s legal, it’s okay (iTunes, Amazon, etc). If it’s illegal, it’s not allowed.</p>
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<p>Yes. If you’ve already downloaded them, it’s fine. The only issue is using the school network to download the files, which you’re not doing in this case.</p>
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<p>This probably would be safe, as it just saves files you’ve streamed. It’s a local processes that doesn’t affect your network activity, as if you were streaming videos normally you’d still be downloading the flash video to your computer.</p>
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<p>Aside from the bandwidth cap at Berkeley, every UC has pretty much the same network policies: Don’t do anything illegal.</p>
<p>Exactly. Also, if your caught, you could have your internet rights revoked from the university network and then you’ll really be screwed. It would make your life difficult especially in college so its best to just download the stuff you want before you leave for school or just find a legal way to get your music and movies.</p>
<p>That’s actually not true, or at least it is over here.</p>
<p>The way my school works is:</p>
<p>-You pirate a file
-The publishing company watches the file and records all IPs torrenting that file
-One of those IPs belongs to your school, so they notify your school
-The school crosschecks the time with user network usage to find you
-School warns/slaps/suspends/expels/let the publishing company’s lawyers on you.</p>
<p>The UCs themselves don’t ban torrents outright, just illegal file sharing, and this is the system they use to catch you.</p>
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<p>No, it’s very easy to get caught. Torrents use a ton of network bandwidth and it’s extremely easy to see what other IPs are currently sharing that torrent. Unlike direct file downloads, there’s no hacking or subpoenas required to peek at the IPs.</p>
<p>I’ve used direct download like Mediafire here at UF. However, I can’t even use the internet here if uTorrent is open, whether its downloading anything or not. The system apparently monitors for banned programs.</p>
<p>I do know that schools does not like it when you use tons of bandwidth but do you think they will let me host my own game server from my dorm? I don’t think ucla has any bandwidth caps.</p>
<p>Also, do colleges (i will be going to ucla) monitor our bandwidth usage? say, will they get mad at me if i download songs from rapidahare or mediafire?</p>
<p>I’m not sure if UCLA has any bandwidth caps; it depends on each individual school. I know for certain that UCB has one while UCM and UCD do not; I’ll have to ask some of my friends to know about UCLA for certain.</p>
<p>Another tip for you guys going to college looking for alternative download sources is to see if your campus has a sharing network. Here at UCSB they have DC++ which allows everyone on campus to share files freely and extremely quickly.</p>
<p>You can always get a VPN tunnel. This isn’t free, but it will allow you to do anything without anybody monitoring it. What you’re doing is connecting to a private network on another location over the internet, with an encrypted connection. All the college IT guys can find is encrypted data; it could be anything and it’s pretty much impossible to crack.</p>