What is Digg?50 Comments
- vrikis, on 10/18/2008, -1/+50I'd love to see more people realise that BitTorrent does not equal piracy. I really think it's such an amazing way to get information around and it's so easy to use... Please repsect torrenting!
- simX, on 10/19/2008, -3/+45I'm a student at Stanford University, and let me assure you that Stanford does *not* get it. That last paragraph goes easy on Stanford. Their new policy on downloading copyrighted materials is draconian. If you get a DMCA notice (from the RIAA for example), regardless of whether it's substantiated or not, you'll be kicked off the network if you don't inform the IT office that you've removed the file within 48 hours of them sending the e-mail. If you don't, you'll get fined $100 in order to reconnect to the university network. Same thing for the second DMCA notice, except it's a fine of $500. A third notice kicks you off the network completely and gets you a fine of $1000.
Imagine if you received one of these e-mails, incorrectly, and you're off on a weekend trip? There goes $100.
I've received a bogus DMCA complaint through Stanford before. And, as I'm sure many know, many bogus complaints have been filed. Putting the onus on the receiving end of the copyright notice regardless of whether or not it's substantiated is dangerous.
Let me repeat: Stanford does *not* get it, and only cares about saving their own ass. - psud0, on 10/18/2008, -5/+27I respect torrenting and P2P and I use BitTorrent clients to find & share educative information.
- inactive, on 10/19/2008, -2/+20Torrenting is the future. Stop fighting it.
- Crisender111, on 10/19/2008, -0/+8Yea me too!
I educate myself about movies, tv shows & music.
Seriously. - Trigononamous, on 10/19/2008, -1/+8My school's got a private DC++ hub. Much, MUCH faster than any torrent I've ever downloaded.
- enantiodromia, on 10/19/2008, -2/+8i think most Stanford students can afford $1600 in fines.
/lives down the street - dsmx, on 10/19/2008, -1/+6People pirate as it's free, however they download it for free because they perceive the item as worthless or at least not worth paying the asking price. You can argue all you want at morals but the fact remains that piracy is a result of a customers perception of your product being overpriced.
- Louay, on 10/19/2008, -5/+9i heart stanford
ps will you accept me if i apply :) - cday, on 10/19/2008, -2/+6@dsmx, People "pirate" because it's free"??? Are you saying piracy is free? That's just crazy. It costs a lot of money to start up a good pirate business. Gotta have a boat and a parrot and an eye patch and a crew, just for starters. Cripes, you can't even find a good gang plank for sale at a decent price these days, what with inflation and all. Venture Capital has totally dried up since the market crashed, so a lot of hard-working pirates are losing their ships...reposessed and dry-docked. Sad, really.
Oh wait...you were talking about file sharing? Why that's just crazy. What does file sharing have to do with crimes on the high seas?
Poor guy, I think you're confused. I hope I've help to clarify things for you. (no need to thank me, it was fun :) - TehDoctor, on 10/19/2008, -0/+3Is it always 9:15 at your school? Because if it is, I go there too, and can corroborate your claim. The Hub is insane. 42 terabytes last I was there, and a big enough pipe to get a whole movie in about 5-10 minutes.
- passedoutghost, on 10/19/2008, -0/+3It's ok, we're on digg. You don't have to lie.
- slythfox, on 10/19/2008, -0/+3It's better then other schools who void scholarships and so on for any case of piracy. And you worry about $100.
- inactive, on 10/19/2008, -4/+6I do it because I think everything in the world should be free, money shouldn't exist, and everything we do should be for the benefit of everybody. So in a way, you're right. Everything is overpriced.
- Cherubim, on 10/19/2008, -2/+4BitTorrent is the most efficient P2P protocol on the net. It's ideal for the rapid distribution of large content as it's fully decentralized. The sooner those old farts at the RIAA/MPAA wake up to this fact and get rid of their 1970's mindsets, the better things will be for legal music/video sharing.
- bootup, on 10/19/2008, -0/+2From my experience educational institutions fail to have any ethics what-so-ever. The policies are illogical, invasive, and I would say even legally questionable.
- slythfox, on 10/19/2008, -0/+2In other news, Folding@Home is still closed source, university does not embrace OSS.
- Enkerro, on 10/19/2008, -1/+2Torrents are very good way to spread information.
Very useful for webmasters. It can bring hordes of traffic to your website. If used correctly.
However. Most of us (internet users) connects torrents to piracy. I can understand why. Because there are lots of copyrighted material for share in there. - suzannethetiger, on 10/20/2008, -0/+1I was a student at Stanford during the height of Napster. By 2000, the university resorted to begging people not to leave their Napster account uploading all day because it was slowing the network. Looks like they've gotten a bit more technologically advanced since then. .
- Youssif, on 10/19/2008, -1/+2BitTorrent should be STANDARD !!
- TehDoctor, on 10/20/2008, -0/+1Yeah, unfortunately, where I go to school, there are some off-campus users and people who go over wireless, so it can suck a little
- MrViklund, on 10/19/2008, -1/+2And?
- Giga, on 10/19/2008, -1/+2@dsmx
Not entirely true. There are some movies I would have been perfectly happy to pay to watch, but the convenience of downloading the movie months before it hit the cinema in my country ( http://digg.com/tech_news/New_Zealand_First_to_Ado ... ) prompted me to pirate it. It isn't just money that is an issue, restricted distribution and sheer "it is easy to pirate even though I am willing to pay for it" sentiments play a part as well. While the RIAA campaign is somewhat well suited (in theory) to targeting the "it is easy" element, it doesn't address the cost/quality and distribution issues. - MrRobotoSki, on 10/20/2008, -0/+1Umm.. I'm not sure what the hell that was supposed to mean but Stanford is not an Ivy League school.
- wush, on 10/19/2008, -1/+2> Pretend it's better than it is.
- MetalGear7, on 10/19/2008, -1/+2First rule of Usenet.....
- swraman, on 10/20/2008, -0/+1Go Bears!
- bootup, on 10/19/2008, -0/+1The reasons the schools pay more has to do with the type of connections they are getting. If they didn't get synchronous connections these issues wouldn't exist. Schools can still get synchronous connections where they need it or limit it to students/research/academic networks. Plenty of solutions exist to solve this. Schools could straight out limit up bandwidth (to the wider internet) for example. There are no good excuses to censor students. Censoring protocols is no different than censoring students- even if the schools is attempting to reduce copyright infringement that in and of itself is censorship. In a free country such as the USA you don't pre-approve messages. You may bring charges or lawsuits after the fact however- or in some instances even before (building and publishing a system with the intent to infringe- or legit copying prior to infringement with distribution)
- bootup, on 10/19/2008, -0/+1Of course they don't get it... If you haven't downloaded the file you can't remove it. What amazes me is that at my old university the policy is that the student has to hand their computer over to the IT department for them to remove P2P software. Now- the last I checked P2P is NOT ILLEGAL nor an indicator of copyright infringement. Removing it is pointless. This policy also fails to consider the fact that P2P may be built-in and chances are they can't remove it. It also doesn't take into account that the policy doesn't say IT is to remove copyright infringed files, just the P2P software. It is a very stupid policy. I would NEVER hand over my computer (with a hard drive it in anyway- although for the hilarity of it the rest of the system I probably would do... or maybe a fresh install of some obscure OS /w a spare HDD).
- onefix, on 10/20/2008, -0/+1I don't think schools are going to purchase a separate synchronous connection and do all of the necessary network routing just to support P2P, but then again, P2P eats both incoming and outgoing bandwidth, so the synchronous idea doesn't work anyhow. My previous point still remains. This is not a question of censorship or even piracy (although some may claim that they are reducing piracy). It has everything to do with the cost of providing the extra bandwidth which is due to the uncooperative nature of P2P software. As soon as a legitimate company comes out with a P2P protocol that can be shaped so that it doesn't decrease the quality of service for more important services like HTML, SMTP, or IMAP then schools will begin allowing the use of it. The fact remains that current P2P software just doesn't play nicely in a LAN environment and until this issue is addressed, anyone that cares about quality of service for end users on their network will block it.
- Helicobacter, on 10/20/2008, -0/+1Georgia Tech should take Stanford as an example.
- swraman, on 10/20/2008, -0/+1Go Bears!
- onefix, on 10/20/2008, -0/+1I don't know what school you go to, but it's obviously a large school. Large schools (most of which run state networks) are the exception rather than the rule. Most people go to schools with less than ~20,000 students. These are the schools that can't afford the bandwidth. Their bandwidth is designed into the funding of IT and if they need a significant amount of bandwidth, then they have to cut back somewhere else (usually in services). It's a very simple math problem. If the cost of meeting the bandwidth needs of a given service exceed the cost of shaping/blocking it then you should first attempt to shape the protocol, if it refuses to cooperate, then you should block it.
- swraman, on 10/20/2008, -0/+1I dont know what school you go to...but mine definatley has planty of bandwidth...It is its own ISP and owns mannnny many IP adresses, ive seen incomplete lists on the order of 10^6 IP's, not including servers, which we have many of too. Bandwidth not the issue with throttling P2P. My school doesnt stop any P2P activity btw, and The internet is stil limited by the 100Mbit ethernet cods that wire the buildings.
- inactive, on 10/20/2008, -0/+1what they're really trying to say is... bittorrent technology is great for filesharing and fast downloading, but they don't condone illegal activities. only problem is most people download copyrighted material. but then again, its not really a problem for stanford because they can cash out on "misuse" of it. its a trap. =)))
- swraman, on 10/20/2008, -0/+1last year on the Cal hub a movie was about 1-2 minutes.
Go Bears! - bubba9999, on 10/19/2008, -1/+1A friend of mine who was a TA at a major University experimented using torrent (when it first started getting popular) to distribute some huge map files of Brazil to his students. He received a security notice because the files were named something-bra.zip, so they thought he was distributing porn.
- sayan, on 10/19/2008, -1/+1Other universities have embraced BitTorrent years ago. The ibiblio project run by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was one of the first to embrace the P2P technology. They have been legitimately using it to distribute free software / open content. Check out http://osprey.ibiblio.org/
Osprey is the technology behind http://torrent.ibiblio.org/ which hosts a host of major linux distros and open software.
Disclaimer: I worked at ibiblio as RA while at UNC-CH (2004-06) - stack3r, on 10/19/2008, -1/+1rudeboy : www.thevenusproject.com?
I could only wish this would happen :( - enantiodromia, on 10/19/2008, -3/+3considering that Stanford has produced just about every web company worth a damn in the last 20 years, it's not surprising they would be a bit more lenient about this sort of thing.
- swraman, on 10/20/2008, -1/+1@Cal: You gt caught. Your problem. They dont send out messages unless the (RI/MP)AA gave them one.
as far as hosting lectures through bittorrent....Big universities have more than enough server capability to give everyone around theworld who wants to see the lecures acess to them. And if you are on the campus network, web lectures are hosted on your LAN so it doesnt use bandwidth.
Go Bears - wukillabee, on 10/19/2008, -1/+1Now I'll never get into an Ivy League school...
You're going to Stanford, you're going to Stanford! - Duncan3, on 10/19/2008, -0/+0This is changing, but slowly. Just two years ago I taught a televised course there and fought like hell to get it made open. At the time they were not going to allow that. Now it's not as big a deal since many universities are doing it.
Tho I have no idea at all how this turned into a BitTorrent story... it's heavily packet shaped and the penalties if caught are severe on campus. This is not at all a pro-BitTorrent situation, it's mainly about iTunes and YouTube, and even that is a big stretch... - onefix, on 10/19/2008, -2/+1Here's a secret for you. Most schools don't have a whole bunch of unused bandwidth. Blocking/shaping any P2P isn't so much a question of copyright for these schools, but a question of bandwidth.
You may only pay $30 or $40 per month for 1M of bandwidth at home, but schools pay more than double that per month.
Many schools used packet shaping at first, but P2P software is constantly trying to get around the packet shaping and it ultimately steals bandwidth from academic research. So, it becomes easier to block the protocols that refuse to behave. - faryzzz, on 10/19/2008, -1/+0Bittorrent without piracy? Whatever does that mean?
Dear RIAA,
I said that for entertainment purposes only so under no circumstances should you screw my ass for that. - Giga, on 10/19/2008, -1/+0They probably don't want to deal with at-risk students (at risk of being targeted by the RIAA) so this thread is probably not the best place to ask ;)
- passedoutghost, on 10/19/2008, -3/+2Oh ffs, use the reply button next time.
- CootABanG, on 10/19/2008, -3/+0Never thought I would see this day....school's embracing torrents. It is a very good way of passing information though.
- dotsona, on 10/19/2008, -8/+1At the end of the day, Bit Torrent equals pirating.
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