What is Filesharing?
Filesharing is fairly self-explanatory; it involves sharing files over the network. There are multiple ways to do this, including peer-to-peer applications, methods built into the operating system, and even ways such as chat, IM, and email. Filesharing has many uses, some legal and some illegal. Filesharing is not itself a bad technology, but the most common uses of filesharing often violate the law.
Why is Filesharing Wrong?
There are productive uses for filesharing used by businesses and individuals every day. However, many people use filesharing as a way to share and download copyrighted material that they do not have the rights for. This use is against federal law, and there have been thousands of cases prosecuted for illegal filesharing in the past year alone. These copyrighted materials are primarily music and movie files, though they can include other copyrighted materials such as books. Downloading or sharing copyrighted material over filesharing applications is a crime. Housing does not advocate the use of filesharing applications to share
or download copyrighted material of any kind.
Also, filesharing applications can impair the speed of our network. By sharing out files from your computer, you leave an opportunity open for users outside our network to connect to your computer, which causes a load on our networks, uses your bandwidth, and leaves security holes that can be used to damage your computer. To help protect your computer and keep the network running smoothly for everyone you should disable filesharing.
What Can I Do to Protect Myself?
The biggest thing that you can do to protect yourself and your computer is to turn off sharing in whatever filesharing application you use. By turning off sharing, you do not allow other users to view or access files on your computer. This reduces your bandwidth and increases your security.