<p>I heard of a recent situation at the University of Rochester.
From what I understand, a student that had recently graduated got on the library's computer and used a program called Bittorrent. The University called this program an illegal hacking program, and had the person arrested. Their life is ruined. Now, the thing is, other colleges allow the use of the program and even host it on their servers. Seems like the U of R likes to shoot first, ask questions later.
They block the use of the Bittorrent program in some places, and leave it allowable on the libraray computers.
This seems like leaving a loaded gun on the desks in the library.
I hope your child doesnt get hurt........
I would suggest that your child should move off campus as soon a is allowable, and avoid use of the colleges facilities. Colleges are not what the were when you were in school. They will easily turn students in for using napster, kazaa, etc. to download. If these same students were off campus, they would have the same rights as they do in your home. Buyer beware.</p>
<p>Bit Torrent I thought was something that is peer to peer file sharing
I have used it legally to down load large files that had no copyright.
I wonder if there is more to the story.</p>
<p>How do you know that their is no copyright <em>before</em> downloading?
Is the file a beta?</p>
<p>lol thats so stupid! you could never use bittorrent to hack, its just used to d/l movies, games, and music. a lot of colleges allow it</p>
<p>what I usually download are music "bootleg" files of a band that encourages and allows bootlegs both audio and video to be made at their concerts. They are not infringements on any publishing company.</p>
<p>*Authorized Live-Taping Downloads - Etree.org</p>
<p>Another legitimate use of BitTorrent is by the Etree community, music fans that freely trade and distribute the music of bands that allow the audio taping of their live performances for non-commercial use. The Etree site lists over 100 bands or musicians who have policies that allow and encourage fans to tape and trade their performances, including major artists such as the Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam, Tenacious D and others2. Sanctioned distribution of live show tapes has been a tradition starting with the Grateful Dead, and many bands are realizing that having a loyal following is very valuable and that they can both support their fans and still sell records. Because the live taping community usually opts for lossless compression over lossy mp3 compression, the files involved are much larger than with normal music sharing. Because of this, BitTorrent is now the preferred solution for almost all of these legitimate music-sharing communities. *</p>
<p>another use of BitTorrent would be when I have my own video/audio file to share .
<a href="http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5778480.html%5B/url%5D">http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5778480.html</a>
Internet browsers are beginning to provide support for Bittorrnet in the browser</p>
<p>It seems as though the punishment is random. The program and the downloaded files are all over the university, the students <em>and</em> faculty are using these files, but again, it is Russian Roullete as far as consequences. Ironicly, one of the students advisors was from communist China, and said that if it had happened in China, there would be no problem. Anyone know of good universities in China? It seems like more freedom there, and, a promising economy....</p>
<p>
[quote]
I heard of a recent situation at the University of Rochester.
From what I understand, a student that had recently graduated got on the library's computer and used a program called Bittorrent. ...
[/quote]
unless you have a link to a newspaper article or other story about this, I'd take this with a few pinches of salt. People have been sued in civil court for using file-sharing, but I doubt there's been criminal prosecution for just that. If there was an arrest perhaps it was due to something else like sharing stolen credit card info, etc.</p>
<p>unfortunately, all schools are under extreme pressure from Hollywood (among others) to minimize, if not, eliminate illegal downloading, under threat of legal action. Thus, don't blame the schools, they are only trying to reduce their risk of monetary losses. </p>
<p>Concernedparent: many countries do not have the type of intellectual property rights that we do in the US. If you were the patent holder or owner of intellectucal property designed, built and manufactured by your own blood, sweat and tears, would you be willing to give it away, free, to 1 billion people?</p>
<p>I, too, am skeptical -- but I'd like to point out that no one's life is "ruined" because of an arrest. If the story is anything close to what you say it is, the charges would never stand up in court - at worst it would be a minor offense that probably would result in payment of a fine. At worst, he probably could be convicted of violation of S 156.05 of the NY State Penal law - Unauthorized Use of a Computer - which is a Class A Misdemeanor. See:
<a href="http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?cl=82&a=35%5B/url%5D">http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?cl=82&a=35</a> </p>
<p>So let's not get too excited over this. Either the case is going to be dropped or else the kid is going to end up with consequences which bear a reasonable relationship to the offense that he actually committed (as opposed to the one that you "heard" about) ... and presumeably he will learn from the experience.... but again, his life is not "ruined" because he got caught at whatever it is he really was doing. The issue probably is not the use of the file-sharing program, but rather what he was trying to share with it - he was probably trying to use it to access & distribute copyrighted material.</p>
<p>If it led to an arrest my guess would be he was using it to download copyrighted material. I use bittorent all the time for downloading my favorite iptv shows and lots of sites use bittorrent files to lower bandwith costs.</p>
<p>Also is napster is no longer a filesharing progam. Its a music store similar to iTMS</p>
<p>Doesn't getting arrested seem a bit exreme...and really scary</p>
<p>How was the student caught?</p>
<p>this does seem really extreme- did you read about this in the student paper?
<a href="http://p2pnet.net/story/5521%5B/url%5D">http://p2pnet.net/story/5521</a></p>
<p>It seems that U of R is charging students to use Napster- which isn't the same thing</p>
<p>I also found some arrests but they had to do with a rape suspect and a purse snatcher, not anyone who was working with computers</p>
<p>University, county, city, state???</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>if it had happened in China, there would be no problem</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>No kidding... intellectual property rights are not particularly well respected there at the moment.</p>
<p>I'd guess that to be arrested, some kind of copyright issue was involved; being at home wouldn't provide much protection, as individuals sharing music illegally have found out.</p>
<p>In any case, I doubt if the student's life is ruined.</p>
<p>I couldn't find any documentation of this topic; Rochester was an early Napster signee, though.</p>
<p>Getting arrested for COPYRIGHT!! Imagine, you have a party at your house and the FBI crashes in cause you play a downloaded movie</p>
<p>I mean if he was selling it...sure, I have made mistakes on this very website, not being careful enough to note my sources for a quote or article, a copyright infringment</p>
<p>cgm, just to nitpick not noting sources isn't copyright infringement. Using copyrighted material without permission (of in a manner that falls within one of the categories of permitted use) is infringement whether the source is cited or note.</p>
<p>okay, first off, this student's life is not RUINED. However, we all have to be responsible for our actions. Bittorrent is typically used on by students on campuses to download illegal copies of music, television and movies -if they were using this program on a library computer, the chances are good that they specifically went to the college library to do this because you need a very fat internet connection to download large files, fast, something they may not have at home. It is highly unlikely that anybody would access and use a program like bittorrent 'accidently'. This is exactly the behavior that triggered all those 'pirating movies is wrong' ads in movie theaters.</p>
<p>Also, you use someone else's computer, you play by their rules. If he was arrested for downloading porn onto the library computers, would you be okay with that? How about if he was using software that left that libary terminal riddled with computer viruses that ruined the work of the next student? </p>
<p>Nobody has the 'right' to commit a crime using university property, and nobody has the 'right' to use university property in ways that that university's policies deem to be unacceptable. And this was a 'recent graduate' so they had to know the computing policies. </p>
<p>Campus bandwidth is a limited resource, something many users do not seem to understand, and wasting it to steal movies and music means that other legitmate projects don't get the bandwidth they need. If your student couldn't get a fast enough internet connection to complete a paper because other students were hogging the bandwidth to nab internet copies of the new Willie Wonka movie, wouldn't you be angry?</p>
<p>Well, this students' aspirations are high, he and his family are devout christians, etc. He feels his life is over.
In the seventies, the Universities turned thier heads and ignored pot smoking; now they are turning in kazza users. RIT turned in a bunch of students recently (ok, i will look for the source).
Now, it is simple to see if an applicant has even been arrested. So this is a huge strike against him. All of his hard work and money for nothing. Now, I know the typical american response is </p>
<p>"Well, thats what he gets. Another one bites the dust. He should not be clicking on those Skype and Messenger and Bitorrent options. Let him rot in jail and dig ditches. People are disposable. "</p>
<p>But, if someone does not want another person to use their bandwidth in that way, block the ports all over campus. You have to build a fence around your pool, dont you? What if you had 2 pools and you built a fence around one and not the other. And then said "well, the kid drowned because he wandered in and he diserves it." Its even easier to block bittorrent ports. But colleges want to entice students to apply and pay tuition by being free and open, and then nail them when they are tempted to use the program. I think the loaded gun analogy applies. They probably treated him differently because he had separated from the university and was no longer paying tuition. But they seem to have the option to nail anyone...</p>
<p>The thing is, using the computers the way he did is not absolutely obviously wrong. It is allowed, perhaps with certian constraints. But step a half a toe over the line, and boom. No warning. (Do you read every letter of your credit card agreement or software install agreements? Or do you just click accept?)</p>
<p>"But, if someone does not want another person to use their bandwidth in that way, block the ports all over campus. You have to build a fence around your pool, don't you?"</p>
<p>Let me pose a question - When the speed limit sign on the freeway reads 65 MPH do you go 10 over? Sure, everyone does.
Do you go 100? No. Why not? It's unsafe, you are sure to get caught, etc. A long, straight and empty section of highway is very enticing to test out that speedometer in your car and see if it really will do 140 as the speedometer reads. But you don't.</p>
<p>Just because we might be able to do certain things is no reason in and of itself to do them.</p>
<p>It is clear that there is no perfect analogy here.
Going 100 is obivously dangerous. An infant would be afraid. An dog in the car would be afraid. The file transfering issue is much more of a grey issue. Cable and DSL allow its use, but people downloading over a random and often moving threshold are just nailed. They are'nt notified that they are approaching a problem. Can you look at you computer monitor and see that?</p>