[WEB4LIB] Kazaa/Morpheus/et.al.

[Sloan, Bernie]

Here's a timely article from today's Daily Illini (student-oriented
newspaper at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign):

http://www.dailyillini.com/feb02/feb01/news/stories/news_story06.shtml 

It describes what the University is doing to deal with the same sort of
issues Dan Lester raised.

And here is the statement from the UI's Computing and Communications
Services Office (which specifically mentions Morpheus and Kazaa):

http://www.cso.uiuc.edu/newsletter/spring02/1214.html

Bernie Sloan

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Lester [mailto:dan at riverofdata.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2002 7:13 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Kazaa/Morpheus/et.al.


I'm hoping this isn't too far off topic, so here goes.

Like many of you, Boise State is very heavily dependent on web access
for some 80 databases, thousands of ejournals, and so forth.
Increasingly we've been getting clobbered by students in dorms and
campus apartments using Kazaa (or KaZaA to be correct) and Morpheus
and others of that ilk.  (www.kazaa.com and www.musiccity.com for the
uninitiated)  (As one who's tried both, go with the latter for less
crashing or locking up and more functionality)  (or go to
www.afternapster.com for info on over 100 such systems)

At the moment the university has a 15MB connection to the net (10
T-1's worth of bandwidth).  During all times from 10AM to 2AM the pipe
is totally full.  It is nearly full at the other hours.  About half of
the total traffic is from Kazaa.  So far, for various political
reasons, it has not been possible to get that traffic blocked.  This
is despite the fact that we have only 1100 of our 17,000 students
living on campus.

I don't want to embroil the rest of you in campus issues, but am
wondering how others have dealt with this.  Have you blocked the Kazaa
traffic at all times, at certain times, or never?  Have you limited
the amount of bandwidth that you permit that traffic to use?  Have you
done something else?

The campus IT guys would block it during daytimes and restrict it in
evenings in an instant if they had permission from the highest levels.
Their interest is as great as the library's, since they get calls
complaining about the inaccessibility of internet resources from
faculty and administrators as well.  We "only" get them from library
patrons who are trying to get a search done or an article downloaded
so they can print and read it.

Feel free to reply off list, and if I come up with a bunch of results,
I'll provide a summary.  I promise confidentiality if desired.  We all
have our politics and personalities, and I wouldn't want anyone to get
in hot water by telling "the rest of the story".

cheers, and thanks,

dan


-- 
Dan Lester, Data Wrangler  dan at RiverOfData.com 208-283-7711
3577 East Pecan, Boise, Idaho  83716-7115  USA
www.riverofdata.com  www.gailndan.com  Stop Global Whining!
Be competitive, intense, and accountable.