After receiving over 100 notices of prelitigation from the RIAA, Ohio University has decreed that all peer-to-peer file-sharing software is no longer allowed at the university. Staff members spent nearly 120 hours going through all of the letters. Chief Information Officer Bryce Bible says that if peer-to-peer networks are left unchecked, they could consume all of the bandwidth and network resources, which they actually did a few years ago when Napster became widely available. Consequences for using these types of software are disconnection from the Internet until students agree to the acceptable use policy for the first offense and disconnection and referral to University Judiciaries for successive violations.
However, some people use peer-to-peer software for legitimate purposes. Students may buy or rent movies and television shows on BitTorrent, one of the software that is banned from the university now. They could also download Ubuntu, a program for Linux from BitTorrent.
I do not think that Ohio University should ban all peer-to-peer software. Just because some people use them for illegitimate purposes does not mean that no one should be able to use them at all. They should just continue to punish those students who use the programs illegally so that the whole university does not have to pay for those students' crimes.
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