OIT to pursue limit on video, music uploads

You can take, but you should not give.

That is the message students got this week about sharing music and video files online.

In an e-mail Monday, OIT warned students against letting file-sharing programs on their computers upload more than one file at a time, though it never said students should not download files.

The message said students who do not comply would be put on a slower part of the network because uploading takes up too much bandwidth.

It did not cite security or copyright concerns as reasons for the new policy. It also did not address the reappearance of file-sharing sites internal to the campus network, such as gank.princeton.edu and sleep.princeton.edu.

Students often use the University's fast Internet connection and programs like Kazaa and Morpheus to get copyrighted music and movies from systems outside the campus network. These media files are usually large and require significant amounts of bandwidth to transfer.

Many students do not realize that file-sharing programs turn their computers into file servers, allowing innumerable Internet users to download media from them, said Rita Saltz, an OIT official. The e-mail message contained a link to instructions on how to disable uploading.

Other universities, such as the University of Southern California, have taken a much stronger approach. Last week, USC told students they could lose access to the computer network for a year if USC finds out they are trading copyrighted music or videos online.

"We want to alert you to the fact that many of you are risking complete loss of access to the USC computer system and both disciplinary and legal action," wrote USC chief information officer Jerry Campbell and vice president Michael Jackson in an e-mail to students.

Princeton's new policy was decided this summer, Saltz said, because file uploading was slowing the University network.

"It was happening with such profusion that it was having a really serious dampening impact for anybody else on the Internet," she said.

File-sharing programs have evolved so much that they now allow multiple users to concurrently download single files from the campus network, thereby slowing the entire system, she said.

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The University Rights, Rules, Responsibilities guidebook reflects this new policy, but copyright infractions do not seem to be the main concern.

However, Saltz said students who download media files they do not own should be ready to face the legal and disciplinary consequences.

"Illegal or fraudulent use of the University's information technology resources is a serious violation of University regulations," she said.

But in the history of file sharing, few students have been prosecuted. "Academic freedom" compels the University to let students and faculty use file-sharing services, she said.

Edward Felten, a University computer science professor who has been embroiled in a legal battle with the music industry, said while sharing copyrighted material is illegal, it is not clear how much moral and legal responsibility universities bear for what their users do.

Most universities, including Princeton, "take the position that they don't pry into what their users do," he said. "[It's] a danger if outsiders can dictate policy to a university with what it can do."