Thanks for the reply, On Jan 16, 2008 7:27 PM, Elizabeth Stark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> That does indeed sound frustrating. Have you considered arguing that the > free software BT clients don't contain spyware, and that users can directly > audit the code to confirm this? I may write something for a university circular or news publication about BitTorrent and the reality of legal file sharing, but I have not considered in depth what I will write and whether I will push a free-software slant. The BitTorrent client named by the tech I talked to as an example of one containing spyware was uTorrent, which is not open-source to my knowledge but is very popular and renowned for its small memory footprint, but I have heard reports that some versions of uTorrent do indeed contain spyware. Of course it's possible that you could download something containing spyware > with a BT client, but that is really no different than anywhere else on the > internet. I asked if that was the intended message, and the response I got was "While it's possible to download spyware using BitTorrent, the client itself is also spyware." > > > What are they threatening to do if you refuse to stop or at least reduce > your BT usage? I have heard no threats related to BitTorrent use. As far as I can tell, they are simply strongly discouraging it and making BitTorrent users uncomfortable with harassing emails. There is a policy for suspected copyright infringement, but since the university claims that it does not look at the content of the files being downloaded, it would seem that the copyright infringement bit would only be triggered by a complaint of such, not simply by a flag sent up by the network hub. It would seem that they determine whether you are using BitTorrent by watching which IPs you connect to, how much traffic you send and receive, and perhaps the signature packet handshake used by the BitTorrent protocol. I have not confirmed any of that, but the emails I got complained about how many IPs I was connecting to and how much bandwidth I was using, saying that my patterns of use are consistent with those of "illegal file sharing". Thanks for the idea about suggesting free software clients. If the resident computer administrators are truly concerned about spyware, I think they should encourage users to use BitTorrent clients that do not contain spyware rather than warning that BitTorrent clients in general contain spyware.
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