University Bans BitTorrent to Stop Flood of Infringement Notices

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It's pretty damn sad that a legitimate tool like BitTorrent had to be banned on campus in order to stop the flood of copyright infringement notices the school was receiving.

A university in Canada has taken sweeping action in an effort to stem the tide of piracy notices. The University of Calgary says that after banning BitTorrent usage on several networks, infringement notices immediately dropped by 90%. People wanting access to the protocol will now need to apply for an exemption.
 
So basically, a Canadian university is too poor to afford adequate internet, so it passes the buck and throws it's own students under the bus instead. Sounds about right.
 
So basically, a Canadian university is too poor to afford adequate internet, so it passes the buck and throws it's own students under the bus instead. Sounds about right.

Think you might need to RTFA. It's auto-generated copyright trolls forwarding extortion notices to students in the thousands. Because blocking an IP protocol is the answer. Copyright 'laws' are out of freaking control.
 
Think you might need to RTFA.

You are assuming that I didn't read the article? Did you read the article?

Article said:
According to Dalgetty, reducing the number of infringement notices wasn’t the only consideration. The volume of traffic and other threats were also on the agenda.

“The more streaming we have on the campus, the more it impacts network performance and that takes away the user experience for other pursuits,” she said.

They got their golden opportunity to dramatically decrease network traffic while shifting any and all blame over to the infringement notices. It's not like they are the only college getting these notices... but I don't see other universities, even those in Canada, so eager to shit on their student's Internet experience. Notice how they come right out and talk about how Streaming "impacts network performance" and claim that it is detracting from the overall "user experience". Funny how they toss Bittorrent and Streaming into the same bucket, apparently hoping that everyone is too dumb to realize that they have little or nothing to do with each other. You think that they are going to pass up this 2-for-1 opportunity to block streaming also? Nah, they can just blame that on the notices also.

Hook, line, and sinker...
 
Think you might need to RTFA. It's auto-generated copyright trolls forwarding extortion notices to students in the thousands. Because blocking an IP protocol is the answer. Copyright 'laws' are out of freaking control.

It really is just extortion notices. To the best of my knowledge nobody has ever been prosecuted. For one thing, the ISPs have no obligation to turn over user information to these organizations, they merely have to pass along the threats.
 
Yes, I did assume you didn't read the article. Valid point, but I think it's just the college in spin control mode. Why wasn't bit torrent/streaming blocked before the deluge of notices if it was such a problem? According to their law, they must pass the notice on. So I'm thinking it took too much time and effort to forward thousands of notices that are auto-generated by bots. Either way, this shit is out of hand.
 
Yes, I did assume you didn't read the article. Valid point, but I think it's just the college in spin control mode. Why wasn't bit torrent/streaming blocked before the deluge of notices if it was such a problem? According to their law, they must pass the notice on. So I'm thinking it took too much time and effort to forward thousands of notices that are auto-generated by bots. Either way, this shit is out of hand.
It is out of hand.. aren't the industries making money? they broke of something?
 
It really is just extortion notices. To the best of my knowledge nobody has ever been prosecuted. For one thing, the ISPs have no obligation to turn over user information to these organizations, they merely have to pass along the threats.

Copyright Trolls are making money on people who voluntarily reply to the threats though.

They talk about Bit Torrent and Streaming interchangeably in the original story. Not the same thing at all. I doubt anyone gets a notice for streaming from a video site.
 
Copyright Trolls are making money on people who voluntarily reply to the threats though.

They talk about Bit Torrent and Streaming interchangeably in the original story. Not the same thing at all. I doubt anyone gets a notice for streaming from a video site.

Is it even possible for an external party to monitor who is streaming? Even if they could somehow get that information, it would be nearly impossible to prosecute the viewer since they are neither copying or sharing the media.
 
Is it even possible for an external party to monitor who is streaming? Even if they could somehow get that information, it would be nearly impossible to prosecute the viewer since they are neither copying or sharing the media.

Depends on how the streaming site is setup.
For streaming sites and apps like the infamous "popcorn time" you are basically still part of a p2p network sharing the video as your browser DOWNLOADS and saves the media from the p2p network to your temporary internet cache, and then deletes the file once you are done.
Youtube and such are different as you are pulling the content from their servers and is not part of a p2p network.
 
So basically, a Canadian university is too poor to afford adequate internet, so it passes the buck and throws it's own students under the bus instead. Sounds about right.

though they did say improving performance is part of the agenda, I experienced having a flux of these silly copyright notices (and this was only from a 200-300 user group), it seriously gets out of hand really fast.
 
On the upside.... the entire computer science dept of Calgary University is now hard at work on ways to mask torrent traffic. Who knows perhaps one of them will even come up with a protocol that elegantly hides its own traffic or features some other novel workaround.
 
there was a time in canada that isps just deleted all these attempts at extortion.

(thanks harper your dream of america junior is still not happening)

most people in canada think they have to pay these assholes money.

in fact it is up to a judge to deal out fines and so far NOT ONE canadian has been fined for copyright infringement.

i wish they would physically mail these out cause i am running out of toilet paper.
 
As much as tuition costs, you ought to get a free license to watch some damn movies. School probably already has a sub for cable anyways.
 
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