P2P Persists After Bobcat Ban

Proving that you can't kill peer to peer; you can merely drive it underground, students at Ohio University are fileswapping on a closed loop DC++ darknet after the school banned Internet peer-to-peer programs. Students found to be using internet P2P apps risk losing their university Internet access. The DC++ network runs on the schools intranet, and since Ohio U. is only monitering external internet traffic, it is (for now, at least) safe from both school and RIAA scrutiny. Of course, the story in The Post, Ohio University's student papaer, could change all that.

Although, the small network of 80 or so students appears safe (if fearful, some administrators have stepped down out of fear of getting busted as others have taken over) as long as it remains underground, the obivious question is how the group expands its network without risking that safety. Ars Technica may have an answer, noting that students at Brown University have hooked up with another darknetat a different school:

One student at Brown who talked to Ars earlier this week said that his DC++ hub just completed a merge with another hub at another school not only to boost the amount of shared material available online, but to spread out the administrative duties of running the site. The student, who didn't want to be identified for obvious reasons, said that he believed that some students were sweating the onslaught brought by the RIAA, saying that "no one wants to lose a degree over it," but his confidence was high that the network would never be infiltrated. Yet this was the risk that they had to consider before merging networks, he said.

Will smaller darknets become the new normal? Direct Connect programs like DC++ and other darknet apps like WASTEare allowing users to set up trusted groups to swap files without fear of subpoenas. However, the obvious limitation of smaller groups is that they don't allow for the rapid proliferation of media or larger file libraries found on vast P2P networks. But in any case, we expect more students to go underground in the wake of the RIAA's continuing campaign to stamp out filesharing at universities across the country.