<p>I know it varies from school to school but I was wondering on average how lenient schools are with bandwidth. Are colleges students allowed to stream video from netflix for example? Can torrents be used for legal purposes. I'm mainly curious about online gaming. Will most schools let you use a service like xbox live?</p>
<p>Streaming from netflix yes.
ANY torrents no.
xbox live yes.</p>
<p>^ yup</p>
<p>10 char</p>
<p>At my school, the dorm internet just has a blanket limit of 12GB/wk/person. Too bad for the guy who wants to install a 13GB game via Steam.</p>
<p>My school has the policy of as long as you’re not doing anything illegal, inflammatory, etc., they don’t care how you use the internet.</p>
<p>What about downloading music from direct download sites like mediafire, hulkshare, or usershare?</p>
<p>Don’t download any music. If you’re interested in free legal music (you read that right), check out Spotify. Avoid the torrents. Not only are they illegal, but there’s also a good chance that you’ll pick up a virus.</p>
<p>Torrents are neither illegal nor filled with viruses.</p>
<p>It all depends on your dorm. Streaming is usually allowed
If you must torrent, get a seedbox or do it through a proxy.</p>
<p>“Don’t download any music. If you’re interested in free legal music (you read that right), check out Spotify. Avoid the torrents. Not only are they illegal, but there’s also a good chance that you’ll pick up a virus.”</p>
<p><em>sigh</em> Torrents rarely have viruses in them. Also, there is plenty of free, legal music in torrents and on the mentioned sites. Torrents are not inherently illegal, and not all music is released under a restrictive license.</p>
<p>Downloading software and music from torrents is considered piracy if the content is copyrighted. If the content is not copyrighted, then you’re good to go.</p>
<p>Google “torrent poisoning” or “torrents and viruses” if you want to learn more viruses in torrents.</p>
<p>No restrictions for me. Well, if you’re caught downloading illegal torrents that’s a no-no, you have to take some online class. But usually that’s if the school gets a letter from RIAA or MPAA lawyers or whatever. But there’s other ways to download that are far superior, or so I’ve been told. I stay away from it, let my friends do it and watch it from them.</p>
<p>Legal torrents are fine.</p>
<p>No bandwidth caps.</p>
<p>Xbox live and whatnot is fine, but we have to use a router, as both the ethernet and wireless connections have an authentication screen that the Xbox can’t get past. When you put a router in though, you can authenticate the router using a computer, then it works fine.</p>
<p>“Downloading software and music from torrents is considered piracy if the content is copyrighted. If the content is not copyrighted, then you’re good to go.”</p>
<p>Not always 
Some licenses are much less restrictive, so (some percentage of) copyrighted works are still freely distributable. It’s all down to the license. Now, almost anything you get through something like the iTunes store is not under such a license, but that kind of thing does exist, and is often quite cool and worth a try/listen/watch/whatever.</p>
<p>You can pay for different tiered service where I go.</p>
<p>I believe everyone gets 5 gb/week and 30gb/week for the year costs an extra 30$ total.</p>
<p>They don’t care what you do with your bandwith as you paid for it. They don’t try to “protect” you from the mpaa any more than a regular isp would.</p>
<p>Don’t use torrents on new stuff. Use direct download sites, you will not get chased by copyright organizations if you do that at all.</p>
<p>Microsoft doesn’t care if you torrent their programs.</p>
<p>Others it depends.</p>
<p>If you are getting the newest GTA from rockstar they are watching ips on who does that but if you are getting an older version they have stopped watching by now.</p>