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okay, first off, this student's life is not RUINED. However, we all have to be responsible for our actions. Bittorrent is typically used on by students on campuses to download illegal copies of music, television and movies -if they were using this program on a library computer, the chances are good that they specifically went to the college library to do this because you need a very fat internet connection to download large files, fast, something they may not have at home. It is highly unlikely that anybody would access and use a program like bittorrent 'accidently'. This is exactly the behavior that triggered all those 'pirating movies is wrong' ads in movie theaters.
Also, you use someone else's computer, you play by their rules. If he was arrested for downloading porn onto the library computers, would you be okay with that? How about if he was using software that left that libary terminal riddled with computer viruses that ruined the work of the next student?
Nobody has the 'right' to commit a crime using university property, and nobody has the 'right' to use university property in ways that that university's policies deem to be unacceptable. And this was a 'recent graduate' so they had to know the computing policies.
Campus bandwidth is a limited resource, something many users do not seem to understand, and wasting it to steal movies and music means that other legitmate projects don't get the bandwidth they need. If your student couldn't get a fast enough internet connection to complete a paper because other students were hogging the bandwidth to nab internet copies of the new Willie Wonka movie, wouldn't you be angry?
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