For students who spend hours with campus computers downloading movies, music or video games, life just got a little tougher.
In an effort to increase campus Internet speed, the University recently installed a $50,000 network program that restricts peer-to-peer file sharing by slowing Internet connections for users of programs such as Napster, KaZaA, Gnutella and Edonkey.
Residence Hall Computing Service Coordinator Norm Meyers said the new network program, which began in November, was needed to battle bandwidth-hungry peer-to-peer software that tied up almost all University network resources.
“Right now, peer-to-peer programs typically use about half of our network resources,” Meyers said. “But before we installed the new Packeteer program, they used 95 percent of our total network.”
Meyers said the new system monitors campus Internet traffic and directs music, movie and video game downloads to slower, low-priority pathways. File-sharing users may find themselves stuck in the equivalent of an Internet traffic jam while students using the Internet for other purposes will be cruising in the fastlane, Meyers said.
Last term, approximately 150 warnings were issued to students who used too much bandwidth to download entertainment media, and 15 students had their campus Internet privileges temporarily revoked for repeated offenses.
Computing Center Officer Jon Miyake said that a handful of students using peer-to-peer software can affect the entire campus community.
“If they’re aggressively using the bandwidth, the whole campus will see decreased speeds,” Miyake said.
Meyers said the most ravenous file sharing application is KaZaA, a program that automatically hijacks campus bandwidth by turning student computers into file distribution mega-outlets called “supernodes,” which are accessed by thousands of off-campus file-sharing users.
Students using file-sharing programs such as KaZaA also risk violating copyright laws outlined in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Miyake said most students don’t understand the severity of copyright infringements, how easily the owners of copyrighted material can come after violators and the huge fines that ensue for continued copyright violations.
“It’s a lot better for students to get caught by the University, rather than by the industry,” Miyake said.
Senior Editor of Wired Magazine Jeffrey M. O’Brien said the entertainment industry often targets file-sharing college students. O’Brien said students can serve as “virtual hubs,” responsible for the exchange of millions of dollars worth of content.
“This happens at universities around the country,” O’Brien said. “The threat from Hollywood coming down on campuses is borne out of fear, but you can’t stop technological progress.”
Last term, MediaForce, a copyright watchdog based in New York City, filed formal complaints against 15 students for violations that included copyright infringement of Incubus songs and episodes of “The Simpsons.”
“We work very closely with universities on behalf of certain clients,” MediaForce spokesman Gary Millen said. “And along those lines, we’ve been very successful.”