Editor’s note: This is part three in a three-part series. Names of students have been changed to protect privacy.

The MPAA and RIAA may not be able to herd all copyright-infringing file-sharers into court just yet, but locally, the University has taken measures to prevent students from using the school’s bandwidth for p2p purposes to protect the student and the educational process.

Mike Corn, Director for Security Services and Information Privacy at Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (CITES), warns that while students may think they might not be doing anything wrong or harmful, it is still illegal and possible to get caught.

“We make a real effort to not peer into network traffic in the interest of privacy,” said Corn. “We do, however, receive copyright violations and notices from the RIAA. What they do is actively scan the internet for illegal file-sharing.”

While he acknowledges that p2p networks are legal and do have legitimate purposes and that students do use them on the University network, he notes that the University of Illinois has received less violation notices than peer schools.

“The University policies are very clear that the UIUC network is really for educational research and teaching purposes,” said Corn.

The CITES network has built in measures to prevent excessive bandwidth usage and curb piracy.

“Once you begin exceeding your quota, the speed of your connection to the Internet drops. If you’re doing a lot of file sharing, you’re going to be going at a slow pace and not do a lot of file-sharing,” said Corn.

Jerry, sophomore in engineering, experienced this problem firsthand while living in the residence halls.

“I was sick of being on bandwidth warnings,” said Jerry. He has since given up trying to download using BitTorrent while in the dorms.

His greatest problems came from trying to use BitTorrent for legitimate purposes. Jerry was using BitTorrent to download video game demos and patches, but quickly discovered that the nature of the program also meant that he was uploading to other users at the same time.

“I’m really pissed at Blizzard for using a BitTorrent client to release their patches,” said Jerry referring to Blizzard’s latest massive-multiplayer role playing game, World of WarCraft.

Corn explained that file-sharing presents a concern for the University network beyond just copyright issues.

“For file-sharing, it’s conceivable that traffic could pretty much take over the network and damage our ability to be a research institution,” Corn said. “Our primary mission here is to make sure you can get your coursework done.”

While the critics and opponents to the piracy scene do claim that the actions of file-sharers hurt the industry, the digital pirates share a very different opinion.

“I basically use this to watch a movie and not pay for a rental and if I like it I still buy it,” said Robert. “I don’t feel like it’s taking away from the movie industry.”

“I still buy music. I still buy DVDs,” said Brian. “There’s a few movies I’ve seen that come out online way before and I tell my friends about it, and they all go see it.”

“I’m sure it’s hurting the industry and they’re losing money, but then again, I’m not sure they need the money either,” said Derek, who still purchases music, movies and television shows on DVD. “I don’t think anyone is going bankrupt over it.”

The future of file-sharing, piracy and p2p networks is uncertain except that none of them will ever fade away anytime soon. After the fall of Napster, more p2p programs appeared and pushed the scope of file-sharing even further. While the most popular file-sharing utilities don’t obscure users now, several programs are already available that make tracing users virtually impossible.

Can anything be done to stop file-sharing, copyright violation and piracy in the near future?

“If the punishment was severe enough and there was enough collaborative effort to end it, yes,” said Derek, but he is doubtful. “You have to have this huge force of people come and take over and seize these electronics and punish these people. It’s very hard to do that.”

And the topsite scene is nowhere near being defeated anytime soon.

“There’s no way to gauge the scope of the scene,” said Derek. “It’s massive.”

A solution to movie piracy could be providing alternatives to illegal downloads with legitimate services. Napster CEO Chris Gorog recently has made remarks about showing an interest in offering an online movie download system. Other legitimate movie download services are already available. The scene could be transformed in the tradition of iTunes, where the public once again pays to play.

“More people are going to want to start accessing movies online,” said Brian. “It’ll get bigger once more studios back it up.

Only one thing is for certain: nothing gonna stop the flow.

Kiyoshi Martinez is a junior in journalism. His column appears Mondays. He can be reached at [email protected].