Access to BitTorrent restricted at University of Calgary

It's now a little tougher for those using University of Calgary servers and Wi-Fi networks to torrent their favourite movies and TV shows.

A change in the institution's IT policy, effective Nov. 1, means open access to BitTorrent sites is no longer availableon the campus, residence and Wi-Fi networks. Users must now prove they have a legitimate need to be granted access.

"It's a way to transfer information and like anything, it can be used for good or evil," said Tom Keenan, a professor at the university and author of the book, Technocreep.

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"Wikileaks as an example, often uses BitTorrent when they want to get a bunch of files out there really quickly, all over the world. Unfortunately, the bad guys use it too, and by bad guys I mean people who want to pirate movies and music, so it's kind of gotten a bad reputation because of that."

The move comes in response to a change in federal copyright laws, which call on internet service providers to send letters to users suspected of illegally distributing files.

"Now of course the university doesn't want to be the internet provider that has to deal with those notices because the rules are, you have to pass them on to the end users, whoever was doing it has to be notified," said Keenan.

"The university isn't in the business of piracy, they don't want to facilitate that in any way so they banned it completely."

A university spokesperson says students, staff orfaculty who have reasonable grounds for accessing BitTorrent can request to do so through an application form on the U of C's IT website.

"We are not saying people can't have it. We're saying people need to think reasonably in terms of their need for the service and what they are accessing. We hope people will take that responsibility very seriously," U of C vice-president finance and services Linda Dalgetty said.

Change needed?

Katy Anderson, a Calgary-based digital rights advocate with OpenMedia, questioned the need for the change

"There is nothing in Canada's Copyright Modernization Act that requires restricting access to websites or blocking content, it's an arbitrary and unfair restriction which has no legal basis," she said.

"Sites like BitTorrent have many legitimate uses,and it's not the place of the university to decide what those uses are. It's also unlikely that this move will result in less piracy, but it does set a dangerous precedent that blocking websites that are 'unsanctioned' by the school is an acceptable practice."

Students agreed the move likely won'tslow or stop illegal sharing on campus, with some calling BitTorrent the "old school" way of watching shows or getting music.

"When it comes to movies and stuff you're pretty much streaming it," said Devansh Sharma.

"At the end of the day it's a university, it's an institution that's supposed to be teaching us the proper way of doing things. So in that regard it's fine. It's like enforcing, academically, plagiarism."

Fellow student Daniel Gibbs agreed the ban likely won't stop sharing.

"I can't think of an academic use [for BitTorrent] unless you've got, well, documentaries maybe," he said.

"But then you just tend to find them online. There's lots of legal streaming sites, like iPlayers and YouTube and that."

Different universities deal with the issue differently, said Keenan.

"The University of Western Ontario already has a policy that says you can't use it and their argument is BitTorrent soaks up the capacity," he said.

"They only have so much bandwidth, it's supposed to be used for research and study and all the things the university is about, if everybody is sharing movies out there, it might gobble up the bandwidth. The University of Toronto, at the other extreme, allows BitTorrent... they just say, try to restrict the use during peak hours because we know it puts a load on the network. So there's a lot of variation."