Campus Computing News

Background

Peer-to-peer traffic on universities’ networks around the United States has long been a concern for copyright holders such as music, film, and game companies because “P2P” (peer-to-peer) software is commonly used to swap materials without the permission of the copyright holders, in violation of U.S. law. The entertainment industry has strenuously defended its rights to make a profit from its products and for years has mounted educational as well as legal efforts to stop P2P on college campuses. More recently, entertainment industry groups have stepped up their efforts against illegal file sharing on campuses by lobbying the U.S. Congress to take action against such sharing. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on September 27^th, 2006, that “During several previous hearings, industry representatives had sought to portray colleges as partners in the fight against piracy. But on Tuesday, the heads of the largest music and movie trade groups sharply criticized institutions that have chosen not to adopt antipiracy tactics endorsed by the industry.”

Additional evidence of increasing legislative interest in the subject of file sharing at colleges and universities is the fact that UNT was one of 100 U.S. universities randomly selected to respond to a Government Accountability Office survey of file sharing in August 2006. UNT did respond to that online survey.

Like almost all other universities in Texas and most universities around the country, UNT has not adopted the antipiracy tactics that the entertainment industry has insisted were the only way to stop illegal file sharing. There are many legal, fair rights, and technical issues that we feel are yet unresolved in stopping P2P traffic on our network, but the increasing pressures from the entertainment industry and potentially from the federal and/or the state government may force us to take some additional steps.

Legal Liability

Legally, UNT is defined as an Internet Service Provider (ISP) under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and as an ISP, the University is currently not held liable for the content of P2P files traversing our network. Our responsibilities to copyright holders is to comply swiftly when we receive an “immediate takedown notice” from the holder of the copyright of material that is distributed over our network. Such notices require us to remove the copyrighted material from the network. Here is an extract from one such notice: 

UNT has developed procedures to respond to takedown notices, which are almost exclusively directed at students in the dormitories. Maurice Leatherbury is registered as the DMCA contact for UNT, so he receives the notices and forwards them to the CITC’s security team, which investigates the source of the offending file. They then contact the network manager (again, almost always the network manager in Housing) to remove the user from the network and to take any other disciplinary action deemed appropriate. This process usually takes from one to three business days. If the takedown notice requests UNT to respond with the action we have taken, then Charlotte Russell, Director of Administration and Compliance in the CITC*, sends that response.

Recent Developments

During the year ending around August 2006, UNT received 45 takedown notices from copyright holders. However, since the beginning of the Fall 2006 semester, we’ve received more than 65 of them. SUNY Geneseo, Northwestern University, Keene State University, the University of South Carolina, and Florida Atlantic University all reported an unprecedented increase in the number of takedown notices since the beginning of the fall semester according to discussions on the EDUCAUSE Security mailing list.  Only SUNY Geneseo reported data (3 notices in August to 32 in the first three weeks of the semester.  This data is consistent with the trend we’ve been seeing.

An inquiry to our colleagues at other universities in Texas revealed that some of them (not all, however) have seen increasing numbers of takedown notices recently, but no one in Texas reported the percentage increase that UNT has experienced. Interestingly, the CIO for the UT system responded as follows:

UNT’s Efforts to Stop Illegal File Sharing

UNT does have a specific policy that deals with the sharing of copyrighted files:  Policy 3.10 states that

The following actions constitute misuse of the University's computer resources and are strictly prohibited for all Users:

 

… 9. Unauthorized duplication and distribution of commercial software and other copyrighted digital materials. All commercial software and many other digital materials are covered by a copyright of some form. The unauthorized duplication and distribution of software and other copyrighted materials (including copyrighted music, graphics etc) is a violation of copyright law and this policy. Exceptions to this are specific authorization by the copyright holder or use under the fair use provisions of the copyright law.

To date, UNT’s efforts to stop illegal file sharing have involved three strategies: (1) educating students about the illegality and risks of sharing copyrighted files (2) removing access to the UNT computer network when a violation occurs and (3) limiting the bandwidth available to file sharing services. We have an extensive educational program, including briefings at student orientations and dormitory meetings, handouts in the computer labs, posters in dormitories and computer labs, and e-mail messages to all students about the issue. We are currently stepping up our efforts to let students know that sharing copyrighted music, etc. files is illegal and subject to penalties.

Using Packeteer Packetshaper devices on UNT’s network, we can usually detect when peer-to-peer traffic is sent to or received from the Internet, and we generally limit detectable P2P traffic to a maximum of about 100Kbps (we have 200Mbps available,) under the assumption that if that traffic is too slow our users will become frustrated at the slowness of transfers and won’t resort to sharing of files. This same tactic is what most universities currently use. The Packetshapers that we have deployed both on the dormitory network and the campus border were mentioned by name in Cary Sherman’s (President of the RIAA) testimony to U.S. House of Representative committee on September 26, 2006. Sherman objected to the fact that some universities relax the restrictions on P2P traffic during non-peak hours.  Our implementation, however, maintains the same restrictions at all times.

Action Alternatives

It seems apparent that the volume of illegal file sharing traffic flowing out of UNT is either increasing or the copyright holders have become more adept at detecting such traffic and notifying us of it. We want to stop that traffic, and are considering several alternatives:

1.      Blocking peer-to-peer traffic altogether. One problem with this tactic is that P2P protocols are used for legal purposes, such as our music students sharing recordings of their performances with others. Another problem with this approach is that the P2P networks that share files adapt faster to blocking tactics than the blocking software and appliances do. This essentially amounts to a game of “whack-a-mole” for those of us that have to deal with the appliances and software. While it is not a completely futile effort to try to solve the problem with technology, technological solutions to the P2P problem are not as effective as the marketing literature would lead one to believe.  In addition, many P2P programs are moving toward encrypting their traffic, which will effectively break the bandwidth limiting products. We are investigating software and appliances that purport to block illegal files from being transmitted on our network, though.

2. Subscribing to one of the commercial services that sell music. Apple’s iTunes, Napster, cDigix, and Ruckus are among such services, and these services do offer special programs to universities. The costs of those services varies significantly, from upwards of several hundreds of thousands of dollars for services that would consist of UNT giving the students the music, to less than $10,000 (and even free) for services that simply consist of UNT endorsing a particular service and directing students to that service, at which students can purchase music. The effectiveness of those services at preventing illegal sharing is open to question, however, as reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education in August 2006.
    
3. Outsourcing UNT’s dormitory network to a commercial provider. The University of Texas at San Antonio employs this strategy, and thus the University doesn’t receive the takedown notices. We don’t know, though, whether the commercial provider that UTSA uses limits or denies P2P traffic and thus students in the dormitories might experience reduced service from the commercial provider. In addition, the commercial service provider would probably be much more expensive than UNT’s Internet service (the CITC charges the housing department $70,000 per year for Internet service.)

CITC is investigating the adoption of a device that has the ability to prevent distribution of copy protected materials.  The device is approved by the RIAA and could potentially reduce the number of incidents of illegal file sharing.  Prior to implementation, more investigation is warranted, however, we plan to make a decision on adopting this technology within the next few months.