Purdue University Launches P2P Network to Bypass RIAA
Written by Mike on April 15, 2008College students have always had the dubious distinction of being easy marks in the target against P2P file sharing. As of February 2007, the RIAA has dispatched thirteen new waves of litigation letters against U.S. University students in their ‘deterrence’ campaign aimed at more than 5,000 students. But one University is fighting back - albeit very quietly - and that’s Purdue.
Notoriously known for their aggressive pro-piracy stance and prolific file sharing, Purdue has never been one to fly under the RIAA radar. Perched at #2 on the all-time piracy “badass” list, they’re no strangers to RIAA’s threats, and students are continuously under attack in these personal litigation “waves”.
The RIAA threats are in large part due to the uncooperativeness of their Internet provider to assist in RIAA’s ‘nip it in the bud’ approach to thwarting music piracy at the school level. Not to be intimidated, however, Purdue has fired up their own P2P file-sharing “intranet” from behind the walls of their campus ISP. Dubbed ‘Dtella’ (from DC + Gnutella).
A Purdue student wrote on the CollegeOTR.com blog: “Maybe Purdue can’t beat other schools’ music scenes, frat-house parties, hot girls, and what not, but at least we’ve got them beat in the piracy department. After all, we are the #2 school in music piracy as noted by the RIAA.”
The filesharing network accomplishes two things:
1. It alleviates ‘bandwidth capping’ commonly imposed on all traffic that leaves the University’s intranet. When a file sharing program is self-contained within the ISP itself, there are usually no limitations to how much data can be transferred, and users are free to share huge amounts of files at high speeds. Currently, Purdue uses Resnet as their ISP which limits the daily traffic to a modest 5GB.
2. Even more important, it keeps the P2P traffic off the Internet, which in turn is advantageous for keeping file transfers out of the prying eyes of the RIAA or other anti-piracy organizations.
There’s nothing new about campuses using their “intranet” to share files, although it is relatively uncommon for one to take it a step further by setting up their own secure P2P network. This is simply a response to the RIAA threats and the countless ruined lives through pointless RIAA litigation.
Previously: The Pirate Bay Demands Compensation for IFPI Block
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120 Responses
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Yeah go write a stupid article outing the University of Toronto, or all the Australian colleges, or any number that seem to want publicity, leave Purdue alone, they obviously didn’t appreciate this.
Go Purdue! Great work guys!
[quote comment="347885"]University of Toronto’s been doing this for years.[/quote]
Dtella doesn’t require a central DC Hub which is why it’s better. It’s completely decentralized.
I dont see what the big deal is. If they have a web site, what is a little more traffic from people talking about it?
Good for Purdue, but this is not news to me the University of Victoria has has been running a hub for years!
From their website it doesnt look like DTella is a hub though. It appears to be completely decentralized and has no need for a server to run it. Sounds pretty cool. I hope my school uses something like this.
[quote comment="347788"]Wow, what a d-bag. You just destroyed one of the best things about purdue. A network of true freedom and you shat on it.[/quote]
Put down the crackpipe, son.
Dtella wasn’t a secret to begin with.
It’s power to bypass the RIAA doesn’t come from its existence going unknown, it comes from the fact that it’s a private fucking intranet. Whether or not it’s newsworthy, TorrentFreak ruined *jack shit* by writing an article about it.
Educate yourself, please.
some fucktard at RIAA has to enroll in Purdue now to crack some heads.
Hell it’s no secret that people share music. I do. What’s your problem those knocking the article? Posting here also increases awareness. Did you ever think that it might encourage other schools to do the same thing, which would be good, and a helluva lot safer for all the poor students who are at risk of being done over by the thugs.
This has nothing to do with torrents nor is it related to torrents, why is it here?
We here at Carnegie Mellon also have dtella up an running, and have for quite a while. Other schools do to, and it is nothing new.
DC++ (with hubs) has been used in campus specific configurations for years before the distributed hub technique that the dtella daemon provides.
If you want to join a beta and get good quality and legal videos you can try out Kazam at http://www.kazam.com/ you’ll need to be in a university network which is multicast enabled. Purdue students should be able to receive content.
[quote comment="347725"]anoter epic fail article brought to you by TF[/quote]
Then stop coming to TF to read the articles Tard :P
Fight the power…………yeaaaaaaaaa
I for one think this article is a good thing. It will let more colleges know about Purdue’s network and hopeflly we can modify their code to work at our school too
Way to go Purdue! Keep it up!
heres hoping the RIAA break into the system then get sued for millions for hacking
“As of February 2007, the RIAA has…”
Do you mean as of Feb 2008?
[quote comment="348023"]Posting here also increases awareness.[/quote]
and now thanks to this article the RIAA may be aware of this DC++ network and will begin to pressure Purdue to shut it down, I fail to see where this is a good thing…
If the best thing about your university is the fucking file sharing, it’s time to transfer.
Also, file sharing over campus intranet = nothing new, so not news.
[quote comment="348206"]If the best thing about your university is the fucking file sharing, it’s time to transfer.[/quote]
Also, apparantly I fail at quoting. That was to #35, Mr. “You just destroyed one of the best things about purdue.”
“Also, file sharing over campus intranet = nothing new, so not news.”
This appears to not be your run of the mill campus file sharing network. It is completely serverless and supposedly cannot be shutdown (according to their site)
[quote comment="348071"][quote comment="347725"]anoter epic fail article brought to you by TF[/quote]
Then stop coming to TF to read the articles Tard :P[/quote]
Second that!
Fighting back quietly != front page of TF, kthnx
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