Originally Posted by Citan

I suggest you only use torrent to download stuff like anime, foreign movies...i.e. stuff hollywood or RIAA doesn't care about too much

Originally Posted by Matfield88

WHAT I CAN PIECE TOGETHER FROM THE OFFICIAL POLICY AND AMONG OTHER THINGS, THIS THREAD:

From what i've read on the official housing policy on this sort of thing, UCLA does NOT keep track of your bandwidth usage or the IP's you visit or connect to, or what kind of stuff you browse for, or even what you download via bittorrent or limewire. They don’t know. THEY don’t care. Here’s the official FAQ/policy

http://www.getlegal.ucla.edu/illegal...haring_FAQ.htm

All right there, set in stone. The URL was in the Pepsi lunch bag with the other usless paperwork they give you when you move in.

So UCLA doesn’t keep track. Who does? The Man does. And He’s watching UCLA like a hawk, because we’re a BIG FAT JUICY TARGET. The biggest problem is that when you're using UCLA as your ISP (as anyone who accesses the ResNet's fabulous internet connection is) it sticks out like a sore thumb when using clients for bittorrent, or limewire, or the like. It shows up as #########.resnet.ucla.edu

For torrent downloads, I use uTorrent. When I’m downloading, it lists the IPs of every peer and every seed i am connected to, the upload and download speeds of content to/from him/her, what files we’re transferring, and a little flag to tell me what country they are from. And they see roughly the same thing, only I’M on their list.

So they know my IP. Big deal. So what?

Well, you can get a A LOT more specific than just "he's from Country X" when looking at IPs. Just Google search "what is my IP" and click on one of the links. Most of them will tell you your IP, your ISP (in our case UCLA) the physical location of your ISP's server (apparently somewhere in long beach for UCLA—go figure) and the address your ISP uses to route data to your machine. The RIAA (and any other interested party) can tell that just by being connected to you, sharing a file, and then copy-pasting your IP into an IP locater program/website.

They’ll get a number. And the number will tell Them who to ask. UCLA

Now, the RIAA sends that rather specific IP address with all the UCLA tags on it to the STC, where they look up the MAC address that was associated with that particular IP at the time. Because we're all good little girls and boys (and because there isn't another option) we registered the MAC address of our network cards in our computers automatically via the STC Policy Manager when we moved in (remember the half-hour wait?). If you have a router/hub the Hub's MAC was registered to someone's name--whoever registered it or checked it out.

The RIAA then sends a “Cease and Desist” notice to UCLA, citing the IP address and the particular violation. By law (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act—DCMA for short) UCLA HAS to tell the RIAA who did it. So UCLA AUTOMATICALLY looks up what MAC address the IP is associated with and AUTOMATICALLY issues you your first notice. Then whoever’s in charge tells the RIAA that it’s been taken care of, and to go f**k off. They don't give over logs of your internet traffic unless they are issued a subpoena for them, and even then only if they still have them--they don't keep them any longer than required to improve the network; after they're done with business they dump them. But they do give you a warning, and suspend your internet connection for a day or two while they process things.

So that's basically how it works. The RIAA finds you, tattles on you to UCLA, UCLA goes “wth!” and yells at you, and leaves it at that. And you should stop at that. Like i said, it's all in that link up there, i just summarized what UCLA said they do.

With that said, Bittorrent, Limewire, Morpheus etc.--even DC++-- are prone to betraying you and your downloading habits.

But why UCLA? Why college campuses in general?

Well, large collections of broke, tech-savvy, culture-hungry college students are extra-prone to download things illegally. There would be a much higher ratio of downloaders to legit users here if nobody did anything about it. Downloading is easy, free, and college campus bandwidth is AWESOME. Who *wouldn’t* download if nobody cared? And it’s easy to get college ISPs to do something about it. The college has more to hang over your head than Comcast or Time Warner would, and a lot more administrative muscle to bear on this sort of thing. So all the RIAA has to do is cry “downloader” and all hell breaks loose in a matter of seconds. It’s as easy for them to track you at college as it is to download stuff at college.

So on to the point: They will catch you. If you download popular stuff, they will catch you quicker. If you download songs or movies, they will catch you quicker. If you download mainstream conten—NBC shows, recently premiered major motion pictures, etc. (unfortunately the most popular on bittorrent) they will catch you quicker. If you use limewire, they will catch you quicker.

The best, or perhaps only way to have them *not* catch you is by not downloading from the scary public internets. Which is what makes DC++ so attractive. Students at UCLA can set up a hub secretly on campus. If they tell only UCLA students, or restrict access to only the ResNet, it will be much harder for The Man to log on, find your IP, and report you. But the hub has to be kept secret. It can’t be posted on the internet—word of mouth only. Its address cannot spread beyond the walls of campus, or the risk is back. So far, I think they’ve done a good job. Heck, I don’t even know what it is.

Which brings me to the *real* point of all of this, and why I got thinking about this in the first place. Does somebody want to clue me in as to what the hub address is? I understand you can’t post it, and you might not even want to e-mail it. But want to meet at BruinCafe or something and tell me, so I can write it down?

Somebody PM me with a contact idea please? I’m a firm believer that sharing is caring, and my external hard drive believes that too.


Dang that was a long post.

--Matt