File Sharing

File sharing is the practice of making files available for other users to download over the Internet.

On the UC Davis campus, file sharing is not per-se banned as there are legal applications of file-sharing software and networks.

• The campus will discipline students believed to be in violation of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act and University of California Guidelines for Compliance with Online Service Provider Provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
  

• The Office of the Provost distributed this 2003 letter about file sharing.

• Does anyone know of anyone who has been disciplined? Who do they go before? What is enforced?
  

• A fellow who lived next door to me in the dorms got his internet access cut off for a while once he got caught. If I remember, I shall ask him for more details. —Wildcat
  

• My understanding is that the campus is only being extremely strict in the dorms. As far as labs, plug-in locations, and wireless, I think it might be more "on your honor." But in the dorms, I think they actually seek out file-sharers now. Or at least that was a sense I got from a panel I was on in 2003. -jr
  

• It has been a few weeks, but I was talking to a guy from IET. He said that they have received more than 500 nastygrams from various copyright holders regarding file sharing activity since the beginning of the school year. Or maybe it was just fall quarter. Either way, plenty of people are getting in trouble for filesharing. —WilliamLewis

Comments:

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2007-02-24 22:59:23   If I were file-sharing, I'd be extremely glad to be on campus. If you get caught, the university gives you a slap on the wrist. If you get caught off campus, you get fined. Also, it's the sharing via providing uploads (for example, torrents) that gets you into trouble. Although downloading copyright material is illegal, it won't necessarily get you caught unless you're making it available as a download from you. Just for the record, downloading the latest episode of House is sheer stupidity. Just watch it on T.V. —TusharRawat

2007-03-30 01:55:37   Personally I think uploading torrents would be one of the better ways for filesharing because usually it's much harder to track since you are not sending an entire file to any one place. The idea behind torrent software is that you only send different pieces to different people so that then they can share between themselves, Imagine getting one 2mb portion of a encoded video and trying to guess what it is. —CarlosBarahona

• it is actually just a much much more efficient form of file dirstribution across a group of people requiring a minimum of bandwidth, time, etc to spread a file. It has nothing to do with security, which is actually minimal as WL points out. ~Users/Davepoole
  

• It's easy to tell what that chunk is. When you join a swarm, you know what the file is. You can just record all the IP addresses in the swarm and send nastygrams to all the ISPs that the IP addresses are allocated to. —wl
  

• But if you only send 2MB of a 1.4GB movie is it still infringement? That's what some people say. Also, just being in the swarm doesn't mean you have even sent or received anything. Whatever. If you're worried, don't use file sharing.
  

• It would still be copy right infringement I think, though if I remember correctly you can send a certain sized clip, this is something that would make an interesting court case to define how much information is necessary for intellectual property. But agreed, if you are afraid, don't use file sharing, just get some friend who already shares files to get it for you. ~Users/Davepoole
  

2008-09-28 21:18:24   I'm actually really disappointed with UC Davis. Unlike many other schools that are actually helping out students, and arguing cases on their behalf (like Michigan State), UCD just says "here, have the students' private information". I would think that our law school would at least try to help out, but I guess SJA is really just out to get people. —BrentLaabs