downloading things via bittorrent or otherwise on the campus network? How "safe" is it really? I always hear about them cracking down etc but are they just scare tactics? How is it monitored?

3/14/2006 1:41:02 PM

they will find you, track you down, and then kill your dog.

3/14/2006 1:46:47 PM

he's right

3/14/2006 1:48:14 PM

they killed my dog

and kidnapped my cat

don't let this happen to you

3/14/2006 1:51:03 PM

they took my mini-fridge.

3/14/2006 2:07:04 PM

if you're worried about getting caught, don't do it. I imagine that they track anything mainstream, from the public tracker sites (torrentspy, mininova, etc), and are hardcore about "new" music releases and movies...

3/14/2006 2:08:34 PM

They can monitor it by port numbers, the amount of traffic going in/out, and probably a couple other internal tools I don't know about. Do if it you want, risk what you want.

3/14/2006 2:31:38 PM

They came over to my house, and they kicked my dog.

3/14/2006 2:38:06 PM

from what i've seen regarding bandwidth - they don't enforce anything unless pressed from outside entities - otherwise there would have been less topsites on campus throughout the years

3/14/2006 2:50:53 PM

I don't have a dog, so they came over and kicked my neighbors dog. Boy were they pissed.

3/14/2006 4:24:53 PM

You will probably be fine just as long as the stuff you are downloading isn't mainstream or popular. If you are looking for movies that have already been out on DVD for a while then you probably don't have much to worry about.

3/14/2006 4:39:18 PM

Wow, I love how the misinformation flies.

They don't monitor anything other than excessive bandwidth. They don't analyze your shit, they aren't going to "bust you" for bittorrent or anything else.

BUT

If you are downloading anything copyrighted from bittorrent, ESPECIALLY music and or movies, there is a VERY high likelyhood that you will be flagged by the MPAA or RIAA eventually. They will send a request the university to find you, at which point you are fucked.

3/14/2006 6:30:47 PM

the thread is the same as saying - as long as i sell drugs and do not get caught, am i a good person? ie, if you doing something wrong expect, and assume the responsibilities of any consequences that may arise. don't stop downloading now.

3/14/2006 6:35:08 PM

speaking of misinformation:

Quote :

"If you are downloading anything copyrighted from bittorrent, ESPECIALLY music and or movies, there is a VERY high likelyhood that you will be flagged by the MPAA or RIAA eventually. They will send a request the university to find you, at which point you are fucked."

3/14/2006 9:15:58 PM

thanks for the info.

3/14/2006 9:37:00 PM

^^ the key word is eventually. If you do it for all of eternity, there is a VERY high chance they'll getcha!

3/14/2006 11:47:58 PM

you people

3/14/2006 11:49:47 PM

^^^^How the fuck do you think damn near EVERY person has been caught in the past 2-3 years? It's called honeypots on public trackers. You don't have a fucking clue dude.

3/15/2006 12:45:16 AM

I got caught for downloading a movie that NBC had the copyright for. Funny thing was.. I was doing it for a class cuz it was all rented out at blockbuster. What I learned from talking with the people:

-NCSU doesnt care what you're downloading, they only try to cover their butts b/c they get in trouble if they dont get you in trouble

-The ONLY way you get in trouble is for UPLOADING the copyrighted material and getting caught. Everyone/thing tries to make you think you get in trouble for downloading stuff, but they try to cut it off at the source. When I got in trouble they told me they only care if I had sharing turned on and that's how they catch people. She said if I wanted to download then turn sharing off.

-The first offense you really get in zero trouble, they email you and then you basically say it wont happen again, delete the stuff, etc

-Downloading older material will not be less risky (I was downloading Back to the Future for a paper I had to write), but less mainstream material will be less risky. If it's something that someone converted, etc (like DVRing a tv show and posting it as an .avi) then it's less likely to be tracked.

take it or leave it, but thats my $0.02

[Edited on March 15, 2006 at 2:06 AM. Reason : oh yeah, and they killed my dog]

3/15/2006 2:05:36 AM

Wow. Back to the Future is "older material" now. When you said "older material" I was expecting a movie that was old enough to be out of print. BTW You can pick up a copy of BttF for about the price of a rental ($5).

A paper on Back to the Future.... I am getting old.

[Edited on March 15, 2006 at 9:41 AM. Reason : -]

3/15/2006 9:40:20 AM

http://www.brentroad.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=254087

3/15/2006 10:11:18 AM

http://thewolfweb.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=394044

3/15/2006 10:28:32 AM

...and stole my Bible!

3/15/2006 11:23:33 AM

Google for peerguardian2. It's a constantly updated peerblocker.

Or, of course, just stoppit and you won't have to worry at all. Nerves can kinda get at you if you keep doing it, because you may not get notified of your precarious situation for a week or so. So, if you DL something that you know might be monitored, you're not out of the woods for perhaps some time.

And considering you even asked this question leads me to believe that you're worried already.

Case in point (concerning nerves): I knew some folks who had just learned how bittorrent worked, and who were downloading stuff. I, of course, being the sympathizing friend that I am, sent them emails that had a really official looking return address which stated that they had been busted.

And at the very, very bottom, finally saying that it was me.

If only I had taped the phonecalls that they made to me. Classic.

3/15/2006 11:56:22 PM

^^^Amusing

3/16/2006 12:02:19 AM

Haha, I just got an email claiming I was sharing "Krieg Der Welten Deutsch Vcd.mpg"

What the fuck, I've never downloaded that file, it does not exist on my computer, and I don't speak german anyways. There was a virus on my computer a while back, but I caught it fairly quickly and it never created a 700 meg mpg file on my system. Is paramount losing it? Or are germans hijacking my computer to share copyrighted materials!

3/20/2006 8:55:51 PM

it's people like you that suck up all my damn bandwidth so I can't play bzflag w/o lagging like hell

(j/k...carry on I guess...)

3/20/2006 9:43:25 PM

Quote :

"Google for peerguardian2. It's a constantly updated peerblocker."

more like constantly updated bullshit.

none of that actually works fyi.

3/20/2006 9:45:57 PM

^ elaborate

3/20/2006 9:56:03 PM

peerguardian keeps a list of "blacklisted" ips and blocks them from connecting to your comp.

this is pointless when trying to hide from copyright holders.

they can just get another ip address

or more conveniently (with bit torrent) they can just do a scrape of the tracker and nail a ton of people at once.


p2p rule of thumb: If you can download it, and others can download it from you, then so can the RIAA/MPAA

[Edited on March 20, 2006 at 10:09 PM. Reason : .]

3/20/2006 10:04:16 PM

so then is it not possible to do bittorrent without potentially being tracked? cuz i cant turn off filesharing with bittorrent like you can with p2p applications like limewire

3/20/2006 11:18:28 PM

[no]

3/20/2006 11:21:57 PM

^^^

Point taken on the scrape, to an extent. However, of the bust letters that I have read (none of which were to me BTW), each one said something like this:

You uploaded 32MB of (file x) to us for 47 seconds on (mm/dd/yyyy).

Which means that they have to connect to you and download it from you. Not every company is going to change IP addresses every week in order to fight this.

I'm not fully disagreeing with you, but I think there are aspects to this where PG2 can give you a mild advantage. I knew a guy that got busted and started using PG2 because of rediculously glowing claims of invincibility that other users posted on forums...and he's still clear 1.5 years after he started using PG2.

But, seriousy, you really shouldn't download illegal stuff. If for no other reason, because of moral issues. I'm just debating a technical issue.

[Edited on March 21, 2006 at 1:57 AM. Reason : Unrealistic scenario]

3/21/2006 1:56:39 AM

Meh, the one I got referenced a file that has never been on my computer and that I have never even attempted to download. I was rather confused.

3/21/2006 2:24:42 AM

I had a friend that got caught and got a letter from the University every year he lived on campus (three years, three letters).

Nothing else happened to him, though.

3/21/2006 9:14:35 AM

hah. Spring semester of my freshman year, Resnet forwarded an email to me from the MPAA saying that my ip address had been downloading a movie the day before. Funny thing is that I had the damn movie 2 weeks before the date they claimed I was downloading it. I just told resnet that I didn't know what the hell they were talking about. They just told me that if they received anymore complaints that they would have to investigate.

oh and some bittorrent clients(utorrent, azureus, etc) allow you to throttle your upload rates but it may have an effect on how fast you can download.

3/21/2006 12:04:37 PM

What does the 'scrape' do on bittorrent? ive seen it, but never knew what it did...

3/21/2006 12:47:15 PM