Most universities in the United States have developed a love, hate relationship with peer-to-peer file sharing, due to thousands of John Doe lawsuits filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).
Stanford University has found a positive use for file sharing, using BitTorrent to help distribute course materials from 10 of its most popular electrical engineering and computer science courses.
The Stanford course materials also can be found online at the Stanford Engineering Everywhere web site. Participants can discuss each course through online study groups found on Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking web sites.
Although the course material can be found online and through YouTube videos, sharing the information through BitTorrent allows interested parties to download the recorded lectures, course materials, handouts, homework and exams in one file.
More than 200,000 people across the world have visited the web site to view and download the course material, according to Stanford University.
People interested in downloading the material through BitTorrent must do so using a Vuze DHT-supported tracker. Transmission, BitTornado and BitLord aren't supported, while Azureus and uTorrent users are just fine.
Although Stanford supports the use of BitTorrent for legal purposes, the administration is cracking down on users who download and share copyrighted content. A first time offense will cost students $100, a second offense is $500, and a third offense is $1,000 to get Internet turned back on.
