Geekosystem: College students are, by and large, very frugal people. Most of them don’t have any money to spend on things like movies, music, or video games, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a lot of them illegally download media online. Though universities are trying to crack down on students who steal copyrighted material, there’s no way they can get everybody. Of course, some schools are worse than others. Torrent Freak put together a list of the 50 universities with the highest BitTorrent rates in the US.
10 comments:
This comes as no surprise to me, and probably doesn't surprise any of my peers either. It's so easy, and of course free, to download these entertainment sources. College kids really are "frugal", but I would lean towards calling it "just plain not having money". I personally don't have much free time to watch movies, but I suppose at some colleges and in some programs they've got time to download those movies. I wish the penalties weren't so ridiculous for downloading those movies. Entertainment shouldn't be anywhere near as expensive as it is. Is it that horrible to want free entertainment? College students just happen to be the demographic with the most desire, but the least cash for such business.
I completely agree with Kelly and have a strong understanding about what it means to be a college student with no money to spend! I personally do not download movies, but I do not think that the penalty should be so severe. during orientation week there were seminars that, sadly, i went to about what I can and can not use the CMU computers for. One gentleman stood up to answer the question of why it would be okay to illegally download music, movies, etc... His answer was that those who were involved in the making of said media have loads more money than we do, and therefore do not need it right away. Students in college will use their education to get good jobs and one day pay for those movies and whatnot. I could not agree more.
I have to agree with the previous two posters the penalty is very harsh. In all honesty though I feel like watching movies/episodes is much cheaper than it used to be. Services like netflix, hulu, and amazon video where you can watch instantly have drastically lowered prices. I personally don't have time for movies generally but it is understandable that people also are downloading programs as well.
I think that with large universities if they made an effort with companies to lower costs on microsoft office, etc. This issue would almost go away completely. I think it is funny the range of colleges as well that are on the top 10 list with vast differences showing it is an issue everywhere.
I agree with all that have posted so far. The penalty is definitely very harsh, but I guess that is the way that they make people stop doing it. I do agree with the fact that we should not illegally download anything. I like that CMU teaches these rules in a class and tries to protect us from breaking these laws. I guess thats the reason we do not make this list, huh? Some of these colleges are top colleges in the country...That's a little worrisome.
Sure, this list tells us what what schools have the greatest number of BitTorrent downloads, but this data will inherently be skewed toward those universities that have the largest student bodies. What really should be considered is a percentage of the number of hits divided by the size of the student body. That being said, my opinions about piracy are much to lengthy to be one comment. In short, this list does not surprise me at all.
I'm aure every school has the ability to top this list, some are just better at having their students keep it under wraps. For example, here. Everyone does it, but you have to be more careful about it because they do monitor at times. Even so, there are easy ways to get around the 45 day suspension they have put in place. However, schools as large as NYU probably just don't have very much time to patrol this issue. They're in New York City, there's no feasible way to slow this process down. And yes, maybe it's bad, but it's also free. College students are willing to do questionable things in order to get free benefits. We're poor. It's in our nature. When you're paying a quarter of a million dollars for your education somehow you just don't feel right paying for TV as well.
Dan's comment is really insightful and I hadn't thought of that. Torrenting is becoming more and more popular as people realize how easy it is to get free software. And while it makes sense for colleges to be wary of the students who torrent on their network and get caught. It's unfortunate for the torrenters who have been doing so for a while and know the steps to take to prevent getting caught. That being said most of those people also know how to not get caught by the university so it's irrelevant other than it causes a minor inconvenience.
It makes me very happy to see that CMU is not on this list. I checked the full list and we're not even on the top 50. I think that this is a great thing for CMU. Probably a large part of the lack of torrenting here at CMU comes from the schools very firm rules about illegally downloading things from the internet. If a student account is used to torrent anything the account will get shut down. During orientation week we had a talk about the importance of not pirating and the consequences we will face at CMU for doing it. A lot of the students had questions and complaints about the system, but over all it was important that the school made the expectations clear. Perhaps the schools on this list should look in to better education regarding piracy.
Everything is way too expensive. That does not excuse breaking the law by any means, but it is the root of the problem. Students are torrenting so much because they cannot afford to pay. Prices are simply unreasonable and when there are easy, free, and often pain-free ways to acquire the same material, a student with little to no income will choose the illegal option. That is not right, but it is easy and logical. Instead of fixing the laws and enforcement surrounding torrenting, some energy would be well spent on figuring out the price issues.
People keep talking about how poor students are, and the fact that they cannot afford the forms of entertainment and software that they torrent. But that's a lie. Maybe we can't afford to download all of the music we want to in an ideal world, but it's really a matter of allocating resources. I'm tired of seeing people buy a $50 pair of shoes and a $10 movie ticket, and then complain about how they have no money. No. You just had $60, but you chose to spend it on shoes and a movie ticket. The fact that you chose to spend money on things that are less socially acceptable to steal doesn't make it alright. If you really wanted that new Mumford and Sons album, wait until Perks of Being a Wallflower comes on DVD and rent it from Redbox. Or if Perks is more of a priority, then see it and stream Mumford on Spotify. Entertainment is not cruelly expensive. Make priorities. Don't just pay for the luxuries you can't steal (shoes) and steal the ones you can (music).
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