University Information Technology Services quietly told computer science sophomore Chet Wynn to shut down a popular P2P file-sharing program last Wednesday. By 11:59 p.m. Friday, a group of more than 2,000 students had lost a way to trade music, video and notes.
Wynn was the head administrator of the DC++ hub for on-campus file-sharing. DC++ is a program that connects users to a Direct Connect network. Each hub is like a room of the network - while users are connected to a hub, they are allowed to search and download files hosted there. The hub based on campus was exclusively for students and allowed files to be transferred at the speed of the University's internal network without taking up any student bandwidth. The program became popular because dorm residents have weekly bandwidth allocations.
Geoffrey Fairchild, a computer sciences junior, started the UT DC++ hub in March of 2004. The hub was barely 2 years old when officials decided to take action.
Wynn said he was told by Student Judicial Services to shut down his hub server, delete a Direct Connect Facebook group listing the hub's address and serve 40 hours of community service for ITS. According to an e-mail that Wynn received, he was not penalized for copyright infringement. He was punished for "commercial use of University IT resources." He included a PayPal link on the hub page for donations.
"ITS turned their heads for a long time," said Alex Sexton, another administrator for the hub and a computer sciences sophomore. But Sexton said that knowledge about the hub became too public, and too many users were hogging up wireless network resources.
Vice-President Daniel Updegrove said that he could not comment about student judicial cases.
"What I'm not saying is that we have direct evidence that DC++ was used for copyright infringement. What I do know is that if you search the Internet for DC++, you can see that if is often used to facilitate copyright infringement," Updegrove said.
Updegrove added that he was not aware of any Recording Industry Association of America or Motion Picture Association of America complaints related to the hub's closure.
According to Sexton, however, the program was shut down because it became too public. The hub's address started turning up on Google searches, and a Web site tutorial that Sexton had created as a joke was the straw that broke the camel's back.
However, Wynn was the only administrator penalized. He said he thinks it's because he runs the server.
"I'm probably the biggest obvious target," he said.
While they complied with the ITS request, the administrators held a "memorial service" for their hub, said Sexton. Sexton said that the administrators posted a bulletin detailing the ITS request on the hub's main message board Wednesday night, and on Friday night, they started banning people. People wished the administrators good luck or goodbye, and then the administrators banned them. Wynn banned himself at 11:59 p.m.
"I think we're making T-shirts to commemorate it," said Sexton.
To the administrators and the founder of the program, the UT DC++ hub was more than a place to share files. The administrators became friends with many of the hub's users. They even met to eat dinner at Jester several nights a week.
"I thought of it as a community," said Fairchild. "It might be kind of lame, but I met most of my friends off there."
Rumors of new secret hubs are everywhere, but Sexton said that he and other former administrators have nothing to do with that.
"People that were in charge of the hub up until now have no intention of creating any new form of mass file-sharing," he said. "So any rumors about other 'secret hubs' or anything like that are either entirely false, or completely unrelated."
As for Wynn, he said he's a little lost without his project.
"I'm probably going to spend [free time] doing the 40 hours of community service for ITS," Wynn said. "After that, I have no idea."
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