February was a busy month for University Information Technology (UIT).
Tufts received 20 more pre-litigation notices from the Recording Industry of America (RIAA), and UIT officials told freshman Jonathan Evans that an outside organization might force them to punish him in the future if he did not shut down the file-sharing network Tufts Direct Connect, which he created last semester using the program DC++, Evans said. He has since terminated the network.
Online file sharing is "putting a significant number of our students at risk for legal action," said Judi Rennie, the UIT supervisor at Tufts Online. UIT has seen a one-third increase this year in the amount of complaints sent by the entertainment industry.
Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman said that UIT forwarded a batch of 20 pre-litigation notices to his office last week. Pre-litigation notices offer students whom the industry has caught illegally sharing files the opportunity to avoid a lawsuit by settling. Settlements usually force students to pay thousands of dollars to the industry.
Each pre-litigation notice identifies an Internet protocol (IP) address within the university's network that the industry has found illegally sharing files. When UIT receives these notices, the department investigates the IP addresses, each of which is associated with an individual computer on the Tufts network. After confirming that each IP address is definitely linked to a particular student, UIT forwards the names of these students to Reitman's office. The dean then meets with the students and explains the situation.
The university does not independently castigate students for illegal file sharing. "We actually don't monitor downloading or uploading," Rennie said. "We're not proactively seeking that stuff out. It's only when it's brought to us from an outside source" that UIT punishes students.
But university officials did tell Evans, the freshman, that an outside source could potentially discover Tufts' DC++ network and force them to punish him for running the peer-to-peer network, he told the Daily. The program was popular because, if used correctly, it was able to avoid detection by outside sources who sought to track Tufts network users' Internet use.
Evans said he decided to shut down Tufts Direct Connect after the Feb. 26 meeting with Rennie and Marj Minnihg, manager of networks and special projects at UIT. "It was basically my personal decision to shut it down," Evans said.
This move affected many Tufts students. "Our estimate is roughly 20 percent of the residential students were using it at some point," Rennie said.
Reitman's office sent an e-mail to the student body on Feb. 12 warning of the dangers of DC++. "The Direct Connect hub and network has been touted as being a 'safe' way to share copyrighted files, including music and movies," the e-mail said. "These assurances could not be farther from the truth."
But according to Evans, users who correctly follow DC++'s directions cannot be caught by monitors outside of the Tufts network, like the RIAA. "The basic premise is that the whole safety factor of the network is that people who report people for illegal downloading are outside officials on outside networks," he said. "As long as UIT is not working to actually try to go and see what people are doing ... then it's not an issue."
There is a potential for misuse, however, which could get students caught sharing files by outside sources. "DC++, if it's misconfigured, could connect to outside networks, which would be vulnerable," Evans said. "Because people accidentally don't follow directions ... no one can guarantee safety."
Rennie said it was "absolutely" possible that the entertainment industry representatives had not picked up on Tufts' DC++ network.
Evans was reluctant to shut down the Tufts Direct Connect network because he had hoped to use the network to distribute legal materials. "It's a little disappointing for me because I'd hoped to make something out of it more than what people had been using it for," he said. "I do a lot of work with ... musical artists, and I had hoped to make the network a way for artists to distribute their work around campus - stuff that's legal and legitimate like that."
Reitman and Evans both said they do not think shutting down Tufts Direct Connect will significantly decrease the amount of illegal downloading on campus. It will "probably not" have an effect, Reitman said.
"Downloading is something that I think needs to be approached in a creative way," he added. "I think the industry needs to get creative and find other ways to stop it, because the number of students who seem to do it [demonstrates that current measures are] not enough to make students feel vulnerable ...
"I can tell you, I've spoken to over 50 students who've received these pre-litigation notices ... who feel very vulnerable," he continued. "It somehow takes knowing a close friend or someone else in the hall who's been caught to make you feel like it could happen to anybody."
