College Downloading Etc.

[AdrianK]

I thought this was the thing that would bust you in the end if they checked? Maybe I read wrong.

You're thinking of an IP address.

As far as downloading, you can't use some program such as remote-desktop to use your home computer for downloading-needs, and then log into that via your school computer?

That's what I'll probably do next year.

And then what, watch a movie over VNC? Honestly, you might as well set up a VPN on that machine; no hassle with remote desktop and you get added privacy with encryption.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

I know back in 2004-2006 they were getting pretty good at locking down the P2P stuff so I know it is worse now.

Torrents are pretty much hammered and they do tend to scan for the big users. You upload to much (sign of a torrent) they kill your service.

They more are going to watch your upstreaming then your downstreaming because it is easier to catch.

 

[SDub90]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

We just implemented a pretty badass firewall where I work (a school). We can now track everything of we chose to do so. Our previous method of blocking illegal firesharing was blocking torrent files. Your school may have no restrictions or monitoring, or it could find your TV shows among your password protected split rar archives from rapidshare.

We can't tell you how they handle this kind of stuff at your school.

 

[(marc)]

Yep, this is solid advice. I've started giving albums a couple run-throughs in grooveshark before purchasing them, unless I'm so excited about the band in general that I'm willing to sacrifice the couple bucks it costs to get it in iTunes on the off chance that I'm disappointed.

Right, because there's a difference between listening to an album on Grooveshark and downloading it via p2p and then deleting it later.

This is like those people downloading songs from YouTube, "because it's not illegal"...

 

[Daffodil]

Right, because there's a difference between listening to an album on Grooveshark and downloading it via p2p and then deleting it later.

This is like those people downloading songs from YouTube, "because it's not illegal"...

Did a quick read on possible legal issues with Grooveshark on wikipedia, and I wasn't really aware... But the point still stands, you can listen to an album on pandora or spotify or some other sort of legal streaming site before deciding on your purchase. And going back to the OP, doing either of the above won't get you in trouble at your school.

 

[AdrianK]

I know back in 2004-2006 they were getting pretty good at locking down the P2P stuff so I know it is worse now.

Torrents are pretty much hammered and they do tend to scan for the big users. You upload to much (sign of a torrent) they kill your service.

They more are going to watch your upstreaming then your downstreaming because it is easier to catch.

That's an excellent point, I guess cyber lockers and usenet would be the only real options.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

We just implemented a pretty badass firewall where I work (a school). We can now track everything of we chose to do so. Our previous method of blocking illegal firesharing was blocking torrent files. Your school may have no restrictions or monitoring, or it could find your TV shows among your password protected split rar archives from rapidshare.

We can't tell you how they handle this kind of stuff at your school.

And what do you do about encrypted traffic?

Did a quick read on possible legal issues with Grooveshark on wikipedia, and I wasn't really aware... But the point still stands, you can listen to an album on pandora or spotify or some other sort of legal streaming site before deciding on your purchase. And going back to the OP, doing either of the above won't get you in trouble at your school.

Spotify is legal, but hardly ethical.

 

[Benji222]

VNC is not really an option seeing as that my parents would shoot me if I left my computer on the whole time I was gone. Also I would have to transmit the information back to myself anyway and then they would therefore see it?

Thanks for that wired article, very informative.

Cant you pull a different IP every time you access a static network? I guess I am just not understanding how they would identify that it was you other than the obvious computer name/location of it happening.

Good idea for spotify and grooveshark actually. I honestly never really thought about that. Too bad I love getting my music leaked/early.



What would something like Peerblock do? Absolutely nothing?

 

[AdrianK]

VNC is not really an option seeing as that my parents would shoot me if I left my computer on the whole time I was gone. Also I would have to transmit the information back to myself anyway and then they would therefore see it?

Yes, VNC is useless for what you want. A VPN however would be very useful:

• Allow you to connect to any site (that your host can connect to)
• Allow you to torrent unoticed (assuming that you don't upload back)
• Protects the data you transmit from sniffing (prevents your passwords and data from being compromised)

You'd need to either host it yourself from a computer at home or buy a subscription (they're fairly inexpensive).

Cant you pull a different IP every time you access a static network? I guess I am just not understanding how they would identify that it was you other than the obvious computer name/location of it happening.

I honestly don't know how IPs are assigned to users within a large environment such as university, but the point is that the IP which appears in the swarm when someone starts a torrent from campus internet can be traced back to the university.

If you use a VPN with bit torrent, it's the hosts IP that appears in the swarm (if you host from home it would be your household's IP, if you buy a subscription it's their IP).

Anyway, that's all about using protection for bit torrent which is a whole other topic.

What would something like Peerblock do? Absolutely nothing?

PeerBlock uses a blacklist to prevent you from connecting to bad peers such as RIAA/MPAA and other trolls out to hunt you down and send warning letters. Due to the nature of blacklists, PeerBlock is entirely useless at providing protection, just don't bother.

 

[(marc)]

PeerBlock uses a blacklist to prevent you from connecting to bad peers such as RIAA/MPAA and other trolls out to hunt you down and send warning letters. Due to the nature of blacklists, PeerBlock is entirely useless at providing protection, just don't bother.

Why do you think it's useless?

 

[AdrianK]

Why do you think it's useless?

Because of the nature of blacklists. How are you meant to collate all IPs used by copyright trolls? You can't, they're impossible to differentiate from legit peers (assuming they aren't purposefully sharing bad data).

And what if they use residential connections as a point of entry? You can't just block an entire ISP because of one user.

 

[Mousse]

I am leaving for college very soon and do my fair share of downloading things online. Anyone know what I can do to continue my habits?

Check with the school and find out their policy. It's always best to get it straight from the horse mouth instead of trusting MR members who may or may not know what they're talking about.

If they don't allow you to play in their sandbox, get your own. DSL is cheap.

 

[Young Spade]

Well at my university, I had a problem with my phone not being able to connect to any of the towers set up around the campus. While talking to the main IT guys, they pulled up my IP (schools require students to use their information to log in to prevent random people using it) and I could see every website that I visited and the time I looked at it AND where on campus I was logged in.

Basically, if I wanted to track somebody, I could do that without fail.

Now of course, I don't do anything stupid online, but they could easily just run a script that simply searched for certain words to find out what people download.

I'd ask around and see if anybody has ever gotten caught; most of the time universities don't really both with it but it's good to not take any chances. If you use somebody else's log in information, I fail to see how they could trace it back to you.

 

[(marc)]

Because of the nature of blacklists. How are you meant to collate all IPs used by copyright trolls? You can't, they're impossible to differentiate from legit peers (assuming they aren't purposefully sharing bad data).

And what if they use residential connections as a point of entry? You can't just block an entire ISP because of one user.

Sure, it's obviously no guarantee, but it's still safer than not using any blocklist at all.

 

[AdrianK]

Well at my university, I had a problem with my phone not being able to connect to any of the towers set up around the campus. While talking to the main IT guys, they pulled up my IP (schools require students to use their information to log in to prevent random people using it) and I could see every website that I visited and the time I looked at it AND where on campus I was logged in.

This is *exactly* why I'd use an encrypted tunnel to get online. Really, who would let their privacy be invaded like that?

Sure, it's obviously no guarantee, but it's still safer than not using any blocklist at all.

Assuming the copyright trolls are only using residential connections (which is really the only smart thing for them to do), then you get absolutely no protection.

But yeah, there is an almost-negligible chance it could help, I just don't see the point. It's more of a placebo than anything else.

 

[IntelliUser]

Well at my university, I had a problem with my phone not being able to connect to any of the towers set up around the campus. While talking to the main IT guys, they pulled up my IP (schools require students to use their information to log in to prevent random people using it) and I could see every website that I visited and the time I looked at it AND where on campus I was logged in.

Woah, think of all the porn.