University of Missouri Blocks All P2P Traffic
Written by Ernesto on February 06, 2007University of Missouri-Columbia (MU) decided that it was not important to make the distinction between good and bad P2P traffic, and blocked all P2P traffic going in and out of the campus network.
Sure, we all know BitTorrent has its “dark sides”, but blocking all P2P transfers is clearly out of line.
There is no doubt that there are students who use P2P networks like BitTorrent to illegally obtain copyrighted work, but there are also thousands of students that use it to download content that is actually relevant to their academic careers. For example, some use it to download the latest version of the freely available “software for starving students” CD or Linux distribution, and for others it is even their primary research topic.
But apparently MU doesn’t care. Terry Robb, the IT spokesman at MU, said in a response: “When folks were caught violating (the DMCA), we were notified by the copyright authority. We would have to take action and ultimately block the violator’s network access. It takes a tremendous amount of staff time on our part to block students and educate them as well.”
I’m not sure how they plan to block p2p traffic, but encrypting BitTorrent traffic might circumvent it. It’s worth the try.
It seems that some Universities and schools are more eager to please the MPAA and RIAA, than to provide educational resources for their students. For example, last year a student at UALR Bowen School was kicked off campus because he tried to download a copy of Prof. Lessig’s book “Free Culture”. He was told that he had to uninstall any p2p software and promise never to use any before he could get access again.
Free culture? Not if it was up to MU and other Universities.
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6 Responses
The benefits outweigh the negatives. Software for starving students is an excellent example for great stuff for students to download via Bittorrent, but now, due to MU’s new “block everything so we don’t have to deal wit hit” policy, students will have to rely on the HTTP server, putting pressure on the site.
I bet the amount of students attending that school will start dropping when all those people transfer out.
Well in my university only http traffic is allowed and I think it’s right (sure I’d like to use BitTorrent ). Let’s be objective, legal downloads are a very very small percentage, and even if you assume all students are downloading free stuff, BitTorrent could be banned to save bandwidth.
well… if you have linux (not needed, just easier) and a shell account, you could encapsulate torrent protocol inside html protocol… You will need a shell account and some knowledge:
Tunneling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunneling_protocol
http://www.whalesalad.com/2006/08/27/tunneling-bittorrent-over-ssh/
That should help.
Central Washington does this same thing and blocks all bittorrent traffic. If I want a copy of ubuntu I’m stuck waiting for a 3 hour internet download instead of fetching a local copy off a seeder somewhere on campus.
I go to Mizzou and can honestly say the P2P ban hasn’t been that big of a deal. I don’t know of anyone who used these programs to download legal content anyway. The saved bandwidth makes it easier for students to access information for research.
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