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Felix and Bob: Thanks for posting this. I've helped several small public libraries with wireless access and offer a one-day workshop where we go through some of the issues related to public wireless access and actually configure an inexpensive wireless router configured with third-party firmware (DD-WRT in this case) to provide better functionality. Although I've imagined several doom-and-gloom scenarios and tried to answer them technically, I've never thought of this one (although now it looks like a rather obvious one!). DD-WRT and other such firmware is capable of blocking most peer-to-peer networks (and gaming servers) either as a group or by service type (including BitTorrent specifically). Another solution would be to whitelist application ports--in other words block all ports except the ones you explicitly want to support? Obviously, common mail, ftp, http/s, vpn, and a few others (sip?) would be necessary. This would require a gateway server--there are some open source firewalling products (capable of running on an older, but functional, regular desktop computer) that would be fairly easy to configure for that type of service demarcation. The cost (other than a bit of learning time) is not significant. Would there be a problem in your libraries (policy issues, etc.) with this type of "filtering"? Wouldn't seem like it--peer-to-peer networks of any kind seem to go beyond the spirit of the public service the library is adequate to provide--but I realize the perspective on such issues is different in different communities. IANAL, but doing nothing seems like a really bad idea. I'd recommend implementing at least one of these inexpensive solutions and doing a quick check with a legal rep about how to answer the letter. HTH. --Robert ********************************* Robert L. Williams Technology Consultant South Texas Library System 805 Comanche Corpus Christi, TX 78401 361-826-7060 -----Original Message----- From: Library NT [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bob Ambroso Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2010 11:00 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [LIBNT-L] Wireless users and copyright infringement... We have been hit with the same letters and we are currently weighing our options though I doubt even with hardware you can stop them. The truly committed that it is. Many clients can encrypt traffic and port hops so identifying this traffic could be difficult. I suppose you could QOS traffic and limit each user to 256K of upload and download and make it so painful to do anything that they themselves would cease... Don't we have better things to do? :-) Bob Ambroso Whittier Public Library -----Original Message----- From: Library NT [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Felix Hotard Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2010 8:20 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [LIBNT-L] Wireless users and copyright infringement... Hello, Recently, our library received a Notice of Claimed Infringement letter from MediaSentry, a company who scours the web looking for pirated materials on behalf of their clients; in this instance, Worldwide Sony Pictures Entertainment Acquisitions Inc. It seems a patron connected to our wireless network and made available for download, via BitTorrent, some pirated material on his/her laptop. This is not the first notice of this nature we've received. Are any other libraries having this problem? What are you doing about it? The way I see it, we have three options: - Do nothing, and reply to each notice with a statement that we are a public library offering free and unrestricted wireless Internet access for our patrons to use with their own computers. - Discontinue offering the wireless connections to our patrons. Because of the heavy use at all of our locations, that wouldn't be well received. - Spend several thousand dollars on a hardware/software solution that would prevent this type of activity. Attempting to manually block all the possible ports and IP ranges at the firewall would be ineffective because of the file-sharing programs' ability to use nearly any available port. I'd like to know how other libraries are handling this. Thanks for any guidance offered! Felix Hotard West Florida Public Library