File sharing elicits potential dangers
As peer-to-peer file sharing grows, Utah State University Information Technology wants to warn students and faculty of the risks.
The university is a registered Internet service provider and complies with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This makes it very easy for copyright watchdogs to monitor network activity, said Bob Bayn, associate director of Network & Computing Services.
When file-sharing software such as KaZaA or Gnutella is utilized, the user does not just receive files. The program also puts information about the user’s files in a central directory so others can have access to it.
“Nobody at USU watches [the contents of the files being shared], but the watchdogs are out there,” Bayn said. “If they see that files they are interested in are being shared illegally through your computer, they will fire off an official complaint.”
By law, the university is required to take action when it receives a complaint. USU receives a few every week from recording, film and software representatives.
Bayn said the first thing he does upon receipt of a complaint is look up where the offending IP address is located. He then sends an e-mail to the owner of the computer telling him of the problem. As a consequence, the computer is generally assigned a non-routable IP address. The non-routable address makes it so “nobody outside the USU domain can see that it’s there,” he said.
“A routable IP address has complete access to the Internet,” said Eric Morgan, Help Desk consultant. “A non-routable address has limitations.”
He said in order for people with non-routable IP addresses to access the Internet, they must use a bridge – in this case, a proxy server. Even with the bridge, the file-sharing programs don’t work. If a student wants a routable IP address back, he must sign another agreement, and then pay $50.
Students who are illegally sharing copyrighted material while using USU’s network are not only in violation of the law but are also violating the agreement they signed in order to obtain a university e-mail address.
Bayn said in some instances, a user’s computer has been hacked and compromised, and another party is responsible for the file sharing.
He recommended that people update their computers regularly with security patches from Microsoft and obtain a non-routable IP address through the proxy server in order to minimize this risk.
Morgan said, “We see more of this than people realize.”
Miles Johnson, lead network systems specialist, said peer-to-peer file sharing has revolutionized the way people use the Internet. Those taking advantage of P2P technology generally use about five times as much bandwidth, he explained. USU does not have the resources to support the increased demand on the bandwidth, so it had to come up with a solution to curb its impact.
USU’s solution is called the Packeteer.
“It looks at the traffic going back and forth and categorizes it. If it finds a P2P packet, it slows it down and hangs on to it for a few fractions of a second,” Johnson said.
Doing this gives the Packeteer the ability to control how much bandwidth is taken up by P2P file sharing.
So, why doesn’t USU use the Packeteer to completely restrict file sharing? There are two main reasons. First, the Packeteer sometimes incorrectly identifies packets.
“If we were to turn [file sharing] off completely, it could shut down some things, such as Web browsing,” Johnson said.
Second, some file sharing is legitimate in instances such as putting up a personal Web page and sharing personal music, he explained.
Johnson said if students are not happy with the current laws regarding file sharing, they should contact their legislators.
-dhegsted@cc.usu.edu