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Threats of and Solutions to Peer to peer File Sharing on University Campuses

Abstract

As high speed network connections become more available to students living on campus at higher education institutions their use, and abuse, become more important factors in network management. Connected directly to the issues of network availability is the issue of security, both of the network and individual student files. This lecture will address the related technology, legal issues, and solutions to the file sharing problem being faced by many colleges and universities.

Description

To explore the issues of peer to peer networking there are three main topics; the history and current state of the technology, the legal environment, and solutions to the issue. By briefly examining the first two topics, the third, solutions, can be developed and linked to the sources of the problems.

The history of peer to peer file sharing begins with Napster and extends through today's popular applications such as Kazaa and eDonkey/Overnet. The technology's development, while widely used, is most concentrated on college campuses where large numbers of tech-savvy people with similar tastes in music, movies, and entertainment have access to computers and high speed networks. While the technology has expanded in use and availability, is has equally expanded security threats to users and to networks as a whole. Viruses, spyware, and invasions of individual privacy are all a part of the pier-to-pier system. The technology's extensive use is what has led to the involvement of the court system, and individual and institutional rights and privacy issues are directly involved.

The legal implications of students transferring copyrighted materials over college or university owned networks are complex. Thus far, there have been no successful attempts to hold an institution of higher learning accountable for illegal activity over their network, but the attempts have been made and will likely continue. What has been successful is the struggle by copyright holders to sue, and win, against individual students participating in these activities. Schools certainly do not want to be held liable for student actions on the institution's network, nor do they want their own students fined thousands of dollars for illegal on-campus activities. The question becomes how to stop the illegal activity while maintaining the campus network as a useful academic tool.

The solutions to the problem of on-campus peer to peer networking are rarely simple, but different institutions have found different ways of dealing with the problem. Ports can be closed to limit specific applications, bandwidth spikes can be investigated and connections disabled in accordance to school policies, and public computers can be locked down to prevent file sharing applications from being installed and executed. These are only a few of the possible answers to the peer to peer question that will be explored. Every institution is unique, but by knowing how others have successfully dealt with the problem, a solution can be found.