[geeks] P2P Monitoring / Mitigation

[der Mouse]

> Determining if the traffic is music versus movies would be
> cost-prohibitive (and near impossible?) so it would be easier to just
> block all/most of it.

Especially since the distinction *should* be legal versus illegal, and
that is something that is damn near impossible to tell without real
live brains in the loop.  (For example, some bands release some of
their music for all to download and trade as desired; whether a given
copying is legal depends not only on the band but probably in some
cases on which track it is.)

> As much as I like BitTorrent (Azureus runs on my main system at home
> 24/7/365), I do believe in the ability to block or throttle it in
> situations where it impedes the network access of others such as at a
> university.

So do I.  I just don't think that presenting it as "piracy" and
"illegal file sharing" is relevant when the actual issue is the
bandwidth impact.  The only relevance I can see is that if you do (by
any means) put a significant dent in the illegal traffic, then, if
Bill's estimate is anywhere near correct, you'll alleviate the
bandwidth-hogging issue correspondingly.

Of course, that's not much help if someone seeding all the *BSD ISO
torrents is what's blowing out your bandwidth. :-)  If bandwidth is the
problem, I'd suggest addressing it as a bandwidth problem.

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