Spring Break
Common File-Sharing Myths Exposed
Joshua Denenberg
Issue date: 3/6/08 Section: News
With the recent RIAA subpoenas on 25 UConn students, this question is probably on everyone's mind: how safe is it to file share? Here are some common myths about file-sharing.
By monitoring your usage of peer-to-peer you can limit your chances of getting caught. This is completely and totally false. By sharing, fewer people can float under the radar, but all it takes is for one unfortunate instance of the wrong person looking at the right IP address at the right time. There are several horror stories of people being caught and taken to court for sharing only one album.
Sending letters to an IP address is a privacy violation. Actually, it isn't a privacy violation at all. According to Michael Kerntke, chief information officer of UConn, the reason this is not a violation of privacy is because the student's name is never turned over to the RIAA; during the whole process the violator remains anonymous. Only if UConn ignores the pre-settlement letter does the RIAA subpoena the school, forcing the name of the individual to be revealed in order for the school to avoid being taken to court. Therefore, complaining that you cannot send a pre-settlement letter to an IP address because it is an infringement on your privacy is a poor argument. If anything, the school is protecting violators from a full court case that would probably result in a six-figure settlement. It should also be mentioned that if a violator's IP is caught, their network access is immediately terminated until the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has indicated that all infringing material has been removed from their computer.
Direct Connect Clients are safe and untraceable. This issue is a little more complex. Direct Connection Clients send data only between computers on the same network. Therefore, this traffic remains on the UConn network and does not use as student's bandwidth. "UConn does not monitor its networks for either content or internal traffic, only outgoing," Kerntke said. This means that software that allows this seems to be mostly safe. However, this does not mean that traffic is untraceable. It is actually just as traceable as any other peer to peer network. The only difference is that since it stays internally on the network, only UConn and ResNet can actually view and see the traffic. In the end, although nobody is actively looking you can still be found and caught just as easily as if you were sending files over the internet. So if you are using such clients, be careful of how much you use it.
IP masking, hiding your IP address, can avoid traces. In other instances, it might. However, in the case of the UConn network, this actually does not always work. This doesn't always work since the UConn network assigns an IP address to each computer. The "mask" can actually interfere with this process. So although this is undetectable, a user cannot actually use the UConn network to access the internet.
So what is the most surefire way not risk getting caught? "I think it's fairly obvious- don't engage in the act," Kerntke said. And he is right; given the recent crackdowns any form of file-sharing runs a risk.
Contact Joshua Denenberg at
Joshua.Denenberg@UConn.edu.
By monitoring your usage of peer-to-peer you can limit your chances of getting caught. This is completely and totally false. By sharing, fewer people can float under the radar, but all it takes is for one unfortunate instance of the wrong person looking at the right IP address at the right time. There are several horror stories of people being caught and taken to court for sharing only one album.
Sending letters to an IP address is a privacy violation. Actually, it isn't a privacy violation at all. According to Michael Kerntke, chief information officer of UConn, the reason this is not a violation of privacy is because the student's name is never turned over to the RIAA; during the whole process the violator remains anonymous. Only if UConn ignores the pre-settlement letter does the RIAA subpoena the school, forcing the name of the individual to be revealed in order for the school to avoid being taken to court. Therefore, complaining that you cannot send a pre-settlement letter to an IP address because it is an infringement on your privacy is a poor argument. If anything, the school is protecting violators from a full court case that would probably result in a six-figure settlement. It should also be mentioned that if a violator's IP is caught, their network access is immediately terminated until the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has indicated that all infringing material has been removed from their computer.
Direct Connect Clients are safe and untraceable. This issue is a little more complex. Direct Connection Clients send data only between computers on the same network. Therefore, this traffic remains on the UConn network and does not use as student's bandwidth. "UConn does not monitor its networks for either content or internal traffic, only outgoing," Kerntke said. This means that software that allows this seems to be mostly safe. However, this does not mean that traffic is untraceable. It is actually just as traceable as any other peer to peer network. The only difference is that since it stays internally on the network, only UConn and ResNet can actually view and see the traffic. In the end, although nobody is actively looking you can still be found and caught just as easily as if you were sending files over the internet. So if you are using such clients, be careful of how much you use it.
IP masking, hiding your IP address, can avoid traces. In other instances, it might. However, in the case of the UConn network, this actually does not always work. This doesn't always work since the UConn network assigns an IP address to each computer. The "mask" can actually interfere with this process. So although this is undetectable, a user cannot actually use the UConn network to access the internet.
So what is the most surefire way not risk getting caught? "I think it's fairly obvious- don't engage in the act," Kerntke said. And he is right; given the recent crackdowns any form of file-sharing runs a risk.
Contact Joshua Denenberg at
Joshua.Denenberg@UConn.edu.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Bradford Taylor
posted 3/06/08 @ 11:27 AM EST
Yes, the safest way to not get in trouble is to not use the great technology of P2P. It doesn't matter how good the technology is. There are cases of the RIAA going after people who don't even have computers. (Continued…)
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