Allow BitTorrent at the University of Florida

4 November, 2004

To: Norbert Dunkel, Director of Housing & Residence Education; Azfar Mian, Associate Director of Housing for Administrative Services and Robert Bird, Network Services Supervisor

The University of Florida Department of Housing's residence network, DHnet, holds a monopoly on broadband Internet connections for students living on campus. In order to offer a high-speed and law-abiding network connection to every student, DHnet has an automated system in place to find infractions of the student network conduct code, ICARUS.

We the Undersigned believe that ICARUS is doing its job too well; that the student network code is banning a growing number of legitimate network services built upon Bram Cohen's successful BitTorrent rapid network file transfer protocol. This protocol is still very young, but already most legitimate large files, such as distributions of the GNU/Linux operating system[1], being released on the Internet are at least offered in a BitTorrent format. Some modern computer games such as Blizzard's upcoming World of Warcraft are even mandating the use of BitTorrent to play[2].

The market is still quite fluid, but projects utilizing BitTorrent are still not difficult to find: Open Source Television and the distribution of other Creative Commons and public domain audio/visual content are the most prominent. Growing projects intending to make Open Source Television are using a meld of BitTorrent and RSS (Really Simple Syndication, an industry standard) as a cornerstone for their infrastructure due to its ability to decentralize information transfer[3]. The next generation of the popular media syndication protocol RSS already has support for BitTorrent metadata to allow for syndication of large media, like one would generate with Open Source Television [4]. News Aggregatiors used to read RSS are presently being adapted [5] to take advantage of the melding of these two technologies [6]. Additionally, all varieties of public domain or Creative Commons licensed [7] content are being actively compiled and released using BitTorrent on several [8] community sites [9].

The applications for BitTorrent are increasing every quarter, and we the Undersigned do not wish to be left behind in emerging technologies due to such overprotective network regulations. Thus we request that BitTorrent and all technologies based on its protocol be immediately and henceforth allowed on DHnet.

Relevant Web Links:

[1] http://linux.ucla.edu/software/bittorrent.php3
[2] http://www.blizzard.co.uk/wow/faq/bittorrent.shtml
[3] http://www.aftrs.edu.au/go/library/research-tools/reports-and-papers/open-source-television/index.cfm
[4] http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,62651,00.html
[5] http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=bittorrent+rss&section=projects
[6] http://x42.com/software/bttvtrss/
[7] http://creativecommons.org/
[8] http://www.legaltorrents.com/
[9] http://bt.etree.org/

University of Florida Department of Housing Network: http://www.dhnet.ufl.edu/
BitTorrent Frequently Asked Questions: http://dessent.net/btfaq/

Mailing Addresses For Individual Statements of Support:

UF Dept. of Housing & Residence Education
Attention: Norbert Dunkel
PO Box 112100
Gainesville, FL 32611-2100

UF Dept. of Housing & Residence Education
Attention: Azfar Mian
PO Box 112100
Gainesville, FL 32611-2100

UF Dept. of Housing & Residence Education
Attention: Robert Bird
PO Box 112100
Gainesville, FL 32611-2100