Re: Do you block P2P ?

[David Gillett <gillettdavid () FHDA EDU>]

  Our objection to P2P is that it generally tries to saturate the
afflicted machine's Internet connection -- and until pretty recently,
on-campus Ethernet connections were frequently of higher capacity
than the whole campus's pipe to the Internet.  It wasn't what they
were using it for, but that their method (P2P) denied other
academic users access to the shared Internet connection.  No
content policing here....

David Gillett


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Sinatra [mailto:michael () RANCID BERKELEY EDU]
> Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2009 12:46 PM
> To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
> Subject: Re: [SECURITY] Do you block P2P ?
>
> IANAL, but I'd be concerned that blocking p2p based on what
> your IPS thinks is p2p could erode the "safe-harbor" umbrella
> DMCA provides your institution.  Because you are actively
> policing traffic that is sometimes (commonly? mostly?--but
> not always) used for copyright violation, are you therefore
> liable for violations that get around your blocks?  I assume
> that your counsel has reviewed how blocking policies relate
> to DMCA requirements, so there probably isn't anything to
> worry about.  It does raise my curiosity, though...
>
> michael
> UC Berkeley