<p>Does anyone know how downloading torrents gets people caught at UCLA? I mean, how does UCLA know that hey are downloading torrents. Does UCLA monitor the packets and/or the bandwidth usage, or do they only take action if they get complaints that your IP was accessing some specific torrent?</p>
<p>I know people get in trouble all of the time, even with home internet connections, for using public torrents where their IP is tracked and reported. But if you use private torrents from private trackers at UCLA, are you still at risk?</p>
<p>When I researched if UCLA monitored usage, I found that they didn't. At least thats what several people here said. </p>
<p>What backs that claim is that the way we were caught was that the warning message was like NBC has caught you blah blah blah etc etc. So NBC monitors the torrents and tells UCLA and UCLA tells us. I'm guessin thats how it works. </p>
<p>If you are using private torrents that can't be tracked, I'm guessing you should be safe.</p>
<p>Well, if they explicitly mentioned NBC as having logged your IP address downloading some of their copyrighted content, then I think you are right. There are a bunch of big companies like NBC, LucasArts, etc. that monitor public torrents and log all of the IP's accessing their copyrighted content.</p>
<p>So just to get things straight... I assume you downloaded a bunch of torrents prior to the one that got you caught? If so, then we can be sure that UCLA doesn't monitor the packets or bandwith. If you just downloaded ONE torrent, though, and got caught, then it is a different story..</p>
<p>It was explicitly stated that NBC logged our IP.</p>
<p>I did download from a bunch of torrents, though they were not the same type of material. A lot of the torrents downloaded in my room were anime torrents.</p>
<p>I don't know, but instead of bittorrent, just direct download the stuff from rapidshare and the likes. Not only is it a LOT faster than bittorent, but it's safer too. At least, the gigs of anime and music I've downloaded never got me any warning. Don't let the MPAA or RIAA scare you. Maybe I'm just feeling rebellious, but it's their damn fault for not embracing technology of the 21st century.</p>
<p>Torrents seem to get people caught the most when they're downloading more popular stuff. Someone on my floor downloaded a torrent that was being tracked by like Time-Warner or some other movie studio. He got his internet turned off for a few days, had to delete the movie from his computer and got a warning that if he did it again he'd have to talk to the Dean.</p>
<p>Tv-links works just fine, because you're not really downloading it so don't worry about that. </p>
<p>Seriously, once you get to school you'll find ways to get your free music/tv/movies via other methods. One would be the rapidshare idea mentioned earlier, as well as DC++ and others.</p>