Peer-to-peer traffic at Ohio University has been almost completely eliminated, said the university's chief information officer.
More than 240 network users have lost Internet access in the last two weeks after they were detected running peer-to-peer programs. About 20 have received exceptions from the policy after claiming they used the programs legally.
We're just about illegal peer-to-peer free
said Brice Bible, chief information officer. He said that the university also had shut down the DC++ file-sharing ring operating within the university network.
It's very very difficult to be completely anonymous on the Internet Bible said. It was pretty easy to see this big hub that was running on campus.
Bible also observed that the DC++ Facebook group had disappeared. One of the group's administrators said it had become private to protect anonymity of users.
The former operator of the DC++ hub confirmed that he lost Internet access Wednesday morning. After a brief period of downtime, an off-campus student took over responsibility for the hub. The new operator urged users not to share files while the hub was off-campus because of a greater perceived risk of detection.
More recently, many DC++ users decided to transfer to another file- sharing program ' this one encrypted.
Internet access is denied to people using encrypted peer-to-peer programs on the network, Bible said, adding that users would have to convincingly explain their use of encryption if they claim their file-sharing isn't illegal.
The university's information security team can monitor unencrypted file-sharers to determine whether the files they share are copyrighted, but can't do the same with encrypted traffic.
Students who lose Internet access for alleged peer-to-peer use are asked to run a program ' P2PUnistaller ' that detects and can remove some file-sharing programs. Erasing and reinstalling a computer's operating system may be the only way to remove some file-sharing programs, Bible said, adding that the programs behave like spyware and can be very difficult to uninstall.
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