<p>I heard that some kids last year were fined 1000+ for downloading large amounts of music using the Duke network. Is this true? Does Duke monitor its network to see if students are downloading illegally?</p>
<p>Also does Duke monitor websites that students surf on? This would seem a little strange and an invasion of privacy (email, etc.) Do they monitor this stuff because of an anti-pornography policy or something?</p>
<p>As far as I know Duke does not actively monitor your traffic. Third party investigators do look for illegal activity though and will then contact Duke. Usually this doesn't result in a lawsuit (and the subsequent $1000+ settlement) but for repeated offenses or large volume offenders it will.</p>
<p>And no, as far as I know Duke OIT is not looking to see if you surf for porn. They aren't Singapore. (Duke has no anti-pornography/erotica stance that I have ever heard of; I believe there are even classes that study it)</p>
<p>I don't know if this is true, but my freshman year roommate claimed that he knew somebody who got a congratulatory e-mail from OIT for downloading the most porn of anybody his freshman year....hard to believe though! Duke will only release your information if they are required by law to do so by RIAA or something. Otherwise, they don't care what you do, unless you are exceeding the maximum download/upload/bandwidth figures, which is hard to do, but I know people who did it, and they just get notified by e-mail to reduce their usage.</p>
<p>Duke doesn't have a maximum download bandwidth. The only restriction I know of imposed by Duke is a 5GB/day external upload bandwidth restriction for uploading to offsite clients. And if you have to use that much upload bandwidth, then you probably have bigger worries than OIT sending you an email.</p>