Quote:
Originally Posted by Kayli
Is this DC++ thing legal???
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The short answer is - yes, surprisingly enough. The long answer is - it's complicated, and probably will get more so.
You may have heard that in the US, the recording industry has gone on a crusade against university students who are using file-sharing networks, suing literally thousands of them because the copyright laws there give them an avenue to do so. As it stands in Canada right now, they can't do this - our copyright laws at the moment actually make it perfectly legal to download music, movies, etc. from file-sharing networks. What would arguably be considered illegal in Canada is actively
uploading material to file-sharing networks, but this interpretation comes more from analysis than practice - in other words, no one has been prosecuted on this basis, because it would be legally risky for a company to pursue such action given the vagueness of current Canadian copyright law. This is further complicated when you consider that current US cases show that "making available" of a copyrighted work is different than "distribution" of a copyrighted work, and so just having a file in a shared directory of a program like DC++ where others could download it from could arguably be legal, too. I told you it was complicated :p
Recently, there was a big uproar over changes to Canadian copyright law that Jim Prentice tried to introduce in the legislature (Bill C-61). These rather draconian changes would close these loopholes and make our copyright law closely mirror US law, but actually be even more restrictive (maybe that's what he meant when he said it was a "made-in-Canada" solution...). One thing it would definitely do is give Canadian record companies license to sue Canadian students, just like in the 'States. For that reason (and many others, like making it illegal to transfer DVDs to your iPod, for example), there has been a massive consumer backlash against the bill, and chances are it will die a quiet death over the summer break of the legislature. If you want to know more about this, check out Michael Geist's blog - he's a law professor at the University of Ottawa and is considered an expert on internet law. This post would be a good start:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3025/312/, and more coverage can be found in the drop-down box on the left called "Canadian DMCA".
I know a lot about this partly because I actually helped administer the file-sharing network that was a precursor to DC++ (called RezX). That's also why I can tell you that, so long as the laws stay as they are now, you won't get in any trouble from the university for using it. Trust me, the people who administer MacOnline are very aware of the existence of it, and while they can't publically condone its use, they tacitly acknowledge that it gives students what they want while helping to prevent massive network congestion from people using BitTorrent or other programs all the time. MacOnline throttles torrents and other (now less-used) file-sharing programs like LimeWire - what this means is that they'll download very slowly, but will work. As someone who lived in residence before this was standard practice, let me tell you, it's essential - without throttling, the regular internet grinds to a halt as 2000 students leave BitTorrent running all day transferring at full speeds. It's not pretty. Mac's not an ISP who can add capacity easily - they buy bandwidth like everyone else, only they get a lot of it compared to an average customer. So, there will always be someone willing to let it run for a long time in order to get new content onto DC++ (and technically, there are also ways around the throttling, which I'm sure someone will inevitably mention - but that's complicated, and liable to get you noticed and given a talking-to by the MacOnline people).
So, in short, it's legal
right now (but keep listening for legal changes), the university doesn't mind, and it'll consume far more of your time than you ever thought possible :p
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kayli
And I'm not gonna get kicked out for having (my own) wireless in my room, am I? Oddly enough, I wouldn't find that so thrilling.....
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You're not going to get kicked out. Trust me, it takes a LOT more than that to get kicked out of residence
If MacOnline finds out somehow that you're running a wireless router on the network, they may ask you to stop, however, for security reasons - but I just took a quick glance at the current MacOnline policies, and it doesn't seem that they have changed since I was there, and they don't even mention wireless routers. So, you'd be fine - the worst that could happen is that they could ask you to disconnect it, but I've never heard of even that happening.
