<p>Does UCSD have any provisions for detecting and/or stopping students from using P2P clients like Bittorrent, Limewire, etc.? If so, are there any ways to circumvent such provisions? Finally, are there negative ramifications for getting caught using P2P?</p>
<p>The school itself doesn't really, or at least doesn't seem to, stop filesharing, but they do comply with the demands of copyright holders. Once they receive an email from the RIAA etc, you get it forwarded to you and your internet access is cut. To get your connection back, you have to have your illegally downloaded files deleted by Resnet. On the second infraction, your connection is taken from you permanently. </p>
<p>I believe nowadays you even have to take some sort of class about copyrights and filesharing on the first offense.</p>
<p>A roomie of mine is having to do all that crap right now :</p>
<p>EDIT: Circumvention. Well, there really isn't any in terms of public BT trackers. Do <em>not</em> use public trackers here. </p>
<p>I don't know of anyone that uses P2P clients such as Kazaa and the like, so can't help you there.</p>
<p>How do they know you downloaded illegal things? What if you downloaded legitimate things from P2P, but were flagged by the RIAA because you were using ports occupied by Gnutella? How would resnet deal with that?</p>
<p>almost no legal stuff is distributed over bittorent protocols. everyone uses http or ftp instead. the only things that are available over bittorrent are GNU software, but you can't be downloading tens of gigabytes of linux distros a week.</p>
<p>Isn't downloading TV shows legal? After all, if I record 24 on my Tivo, that's considered legal, so what's the difference if I get my 24 fix from bittorrent?</p>
<p>Well, then downloading movies videotaped at the theaters is legal. And if you can prove that the music you downloaded from bittorrent was played back on big speakers and then recorded with a microphone, that would be legal too.</p>
Isn't downloading TV shows legal? After all, if I record 24 on my Tivo, that's considered legal, so what's the difference if I get my 24 fix from bittorrent?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That's not a very good comparison. The big problem with downloading is that you can save and distribute it as you please. You can't save and distribute from a recording box unless you somehow transfer it to your computer (which, when sharing, is an illegal action).</p>
<p>It does, however, lead to the question of using a DVDr to record TV shows onto a DVD.</p>
<p>You'll prolly get caught... I know someone whose internet was shut off because he was downloading some HBO show, and HBO contacted the school and told them to deal with it... Quite frankly, I think he got off easy. If he got caught by the MPAA or RIAA, he would have probably gotten sued. </p>
<p>Oh, and we have this information card thing that no one had ever read that says that one year 40 people at UCSD got sued because of this issue.</p>
<p>They don't actually actively look for pirates. That is, they don't look and say "hmm.. this guy is downloading 654645654GB a week ... let's bust him." They only really seem to bust you if the RIAA/etc bust you. All of my friends enjoy private trackers freely.</p>
<p>Slorg, someone got owned for using an FTP? Can you explain what he was doing and what they said?</p>
<p>I'm sure theres many ways to avoid getting caught, why not just organize a "community suite" computer, that is, a computer for everyone's supposed usage, only to have it be downloading all the stuff you want! I'm a genius.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Is it possible to use encryption to be able to use bittorrent? (ie. transport encryption plugin for Azureus)
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You can use encryption to hide the fact that you're using a torrent, but it won't change the fact that you're using up a large amount of bandwidth (and really, p2p is the only thing that uses up that much). It also won't make you anonymous on the tracker, so you can still be caught if you're downloading anything illegal.</p>