Yet another ethical dilemma

[Vlad!]

Ok, there was this guy at Maryland college. He reported the school's student-run Direct Connect server (a filesharing system) to the school's abuse hotline. The server was shut down. Now this guy is the target of intense criticism.
http://www.inform.umd.edu/News/Diamondback...2/10/news2.html
and
http://www.inform.umd.edu/News/Diamondback...2/11/news4.html

So...you're in his shoes. Do you report it?  

[leinad]

So...you're in his shoes. Do you report it?

No.  But whether that would be the right thing to do is another question.

[oneafroboy]

No, I don't think that I would. Still I'm pretty much against file-sharing morally, speaking. I mean, I participate in the pub, but I don't really see that as wrong, because it's basically like lending a friend a CD or something.  

[enemy anemone]

um, no. what is wrong with having a P2P system, and why shut it down just because people could use it to share music files?
I wouldn't be one to hunt the guy down and lynch him, though. sheesh.

what about your opinion, Vlad!?

[Vlad!]

Peer-to-peer systems follow the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law. They're like a pimp, if you pardon the expression, who hooks 'customers' up with 'goods' of dubious legality. Since the transfer is from a private computer to another private computer without using the p2p system's servers to store the goods, they can wash their hands of the matter, claiming that it's not their fault what users transfer over their system. And it's true, legally and logically. They're no more engaging in illegal activity than the post office, because although you can use the PO to ship illegal goods, it also has many legitimate uses.

Unfortunately, file-sharing services are places were copyrighted material is transferred by the petabyte, unrestricted and unmonitored. It's like the shady banks in the Cayman islands where ill-gotten goods can be stored with confidentiality.

So normally no, I wouldn't report it. But from what I understand, this service was created using the campus network. It is appealing to students because they can get speeds in the MB/sec range for downloading pirated movies, software, music, and pornography. So this server might (I don't know, since I haven't read their policy) be a violation of the acceptable use guidelines. And it probably negatively affects bandwidth over the campus as a whole. I know I've been annoyed by occasional slow connections trying to access a computer in the CS Lab's Linux cluster.

Finally, and I don't know if the article mentioned this or not, the University offers up to $10,000 as a reward to people who report illegal activity on the campus network. As a poor college student myself, I have to admit that the lure of a reward that large is much more incentive than the feeble moral ground or bandwidth issues that could be used to justify an action like this.

I probably wouldn't report stuff like this. But I can see why he would.

Unfortunately, the students have made this guy's life pretty bad. Why? Because they can't engage in high-speed, large-scale piracy. Normally, I might even regard him with a small amount of contempt, for trying to cash in at the expense of his fellow students. But after seeing the unnecessary and horrible reaction, I'm more inclined to feel bad for him and take his side.