<p>Those are bad analogies. We're supposed to buy our audio CD's and pay for our tickets to watch movies in theaters. However, we don't need to pay anything to watch local television.</p>
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<p>Then wouldn't it be OK to download the TV episode as long as you don't share it with friends? Besides, people in the past always recorded TV shows on VCR- that could always be used as a method of 'distribution' but obviously recording on VHS is completely legal as long as you don't distribute.</p>
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<p>What exactly do you mean by bandwidth? Basically, if I just spend only about 15-20 minutes downloading at 500 kb/sec, would that be a problem? Or is the bandwidth issue only existent if I were to say leave my computer on all night downloading who-knows-what.</p>
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What exactly do you mean by bandwidth? Basically, if I just spend only about 15-20 minutes downloading at 500 kb/sec, would that be a problem? Or is the bandwidth issue only existent if I were to say leave my computer on all night downloading who-knows-what.
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<p>The second one. I'm just saying that if you're using up a large amount of bandwidth, the administrators or whoever monitors the web activities may notice it and infer that it's most likely from a p2p client. Of course, its A LOT of downloading that's needed to make anyone notice, and even then, its not anything to worry about, as theres no evidence of anything illegal.</p>
<p>The only reason I brought that part about bandwidth up was because my friend's ISP cut off his service because he downloaded somewhere around 400 GB in a month (don't ask me how that's possible, I don't know either).</p>
<p>400GB o_O That was crazy...but I wonder how much I download every month...</p>
<p>I really hope that downloading TV shows is not illegal...since my two favorite TV shows start at the same time (24 and Heroes!), I can only watch one and download another one</p>
<p>Pretty sure you can't stop them from finding out. If all the traffic is routed through their system, they can see exactly what you're requesting from other servers.</p>
<p>Yeah I guess I have to settle for that If they consider d/ling tv shows as illegal :X Also I can watch 24 on myspace.com/24 and watch heroes on tv as well XD</p>
<p>Well...but It's always cool to download and watch TV shows on HD...instead of crappy streaming resolution online =[</p>
<p>Get a private VPN account or consider a mobile broadband internet service to protect your privacy. Despite the claims they tell you, some schools do actively monitor web traffic. If you’re not 100% sure if your school does monitor your web usage or not, don’t take any chances. While the only sure way to be safe is not to download content illegaly, you are much safer using your own web service that you pay for than using the school’s network if you wish to do something naughty. Why do you think college students get caught downloading illegal content at such a higher rate than the average American file sharer? I suggest mobile broadband over a wired cable or DSL connection because some schools are wired only to allow access to their network.</p>
<p>Honestly, my first 2 years at UCSD I probably downloaded close to 100 gigs worth of stuff. Just don’t download the NEWEST stuff, and you won’t get caught.</p>
<p>It was funny, my friend who downloaded the NEWEST south park episode got caught. It was like his 4rd time downloading p2p stuff. I laughed at him.</p>
<p>So can someone clarify if using Limewire just to download a couple songs would get you into any trouble? I mean, doesn’t everyone do that these days?</p>
<p>Yes with UCSD but not with AT&T (lol its a catch 22!) who unfortunately recently banned bittorrent over its cellular network. You’re also out of luck if you’re with verizon… not sure about the others.</p>
<p>The more you download, the higher your risk of getting caught is. It is unlikely to get caught if you download a song here and there, but the possibility is still there. The people who get caught the most are those who have lots of music and other files stored on their computer and it’s being shared. Law enforcement goes after large suppliers more than those who download a song here and there, but no one is 100% safe.</p>
<p>If you’re going to use limewire to just download a few songs, it’d prob. be easier to google
“song mediafire”. I guarantee that you’ll find a lot of the mainstream songs that way.</p>
<p>^ I use it all the time. It’s not P2P so you can DL as much as you want unless it’s an absurd amount of bandwidth (like 400 GBs/month…) If you get caught, you don’t just pay a fine, you get cut from using UCSD internet forever.</p>
<p>Based on what everyone’s saying, it seems like UCSD only busts if the RIAA busts and/or if they catch you using P2P, not if you have reasonably high bandwidth usage. So I’m thinking get a seedbox or a dedicated server in Europe and install torrenting software on it. Then download to your UCSD network using encrypted FTP or if you want to be really paranoid encrypted HTTP. If they ask what you’re doing, just say you’re watching a ton of HD stuff on Youtube or Hulu or something(this is assuming they don’t actually look at the website you had high bandwidth usage to). </p>
<p>Or if you don’t care about new content as much, setup a darknet on top of Resnet and share files with your friends.</p>
<p>The Youtube/Hulu might not hold up since I don’t actually know how ResNet handles it/what they monitor, but if you use encrypted HTTP/FTP at least they can’t tell WHAT you’re downloading so that’s much safer than openly using torrents(which they CAN monitor).</p>