UT Information Technology blocked access to a network used by several popular peer file sharing programs yesterday. This came after receiving a number of illegal use notices from the Recording Industry Association of America.
Access at UT to the Gnutella network, which is used for programs such as LimeWire, FrostWire and Cabos, was terminated yesterday evening, according to team leader for quality, communication and security Melissa Crabtree.
"The RIAA can aggressively scan for programs," Crabtree said. "They recently went after people who were using Gnutella, and apparently [a lot of] people on campus were using [it]. In order to reduce the number, we decided to block the use of it entirely."
IT received 66 violation notices yesterday and 65 the day before from the RIAA, Crabtree said.
IT heeds the notifications from the RIAA because UT legal consultants advised that doing otherwise was illegal, Crabtree said.
UT does not actively scan for such violations; they only respond to the notifications from the RIAA, according senior network security analyst Chad Hrivnyak.
"We don't even know who the student is. We just shut off the offending machine," Hrivnyak said.
Blocked students do not find out what's happened to their account until they inevitably call the IT help desk to discover why they aren't getting access, Hrivnyak said.
Without blocking access to the Gnutella network outright, IT faced dealing with each violation on a case-by-case basis, Crabtree said, adding that this was extremely time consuming.
"It takes up to about two and half hours to investigate who the offender is and then additional time to get them to come in here and do interviews," Crabtree said.
Hrivnyak agreed.
"We were talking weeks and weeks of interviewing students, which is not practical at all," he said.
First time offenders would lose network access until being interviewed by someone within IT. Second time offenders lost network privileges for the rest of the year and needed to appear before Judicial Affairs, according to Crabtree.
"This is to protect the rights of the students," Crabtree said. "We would be shutting down the access for all these students. That would mean if they were [distance learning] students, they could not have access to their classes until they came in."
Preventing access to the Gnutella network is achieved using a technology UT already has called an intrusion prevention system. Since UT already owns the software, the policy change has cost UT nothing, Hrivnyak said.
"They actually pushed a little check box, pressed execute, then it just applies the policy, and it works," Hrivnyak said.
IPS looks for recognizable internet traffic patterns to identify connections that are using the file sharing network, and then blocks it, Hrivnyak said.
According to Hrivnyak, UT is less severe than some other universities in how it deals with offenders.
Wayne State [University] actually has a $100 re-activation fee they have to pay after their [address] is blocked," he said. "And that's on a first offense."
Crabtree agreed about UT's leniency.
"I do firmly believe the University of Toledo is a lot less aggressive than a lot of universities," she said. "We feel we are trying to give students the benefit of the doubt."
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