Hi guys. In the past I was happy just to grab the block lists from here, load them into SafePeer and be done with it. Then torrent away without a care. But that was a long time ago. Nowadays I try to keep up to date on the meat of the matter and exactly what IPs I'm blocking and whether they're adequate and appropriate. It is for that reason I need to ask something now. Why am I blocking all traffic from Universities??? Is Bit Torrent from a University network inherently bad??? Aren't we doing a huge dis-service to those MILLIONS of students who would otherwise be a huge value-add to the speed of the overall network?

Curiously Yours,

ME

Hi.. Basically since the EDU list is an optional blocklist, we leave it up to you to decide whether you really need it or not.

Yes it could cut out a lot of sources but I would find it hard to blindly trust every source. We try to add any known ranges that are considered a threat to level 1.

EDU connections are monitored more closely than probably any other kind of network. Some universities may work with and have worked with anti p2p companies to allow them to track and gather information on users and students. Icarus, pallisades and others I'd have to go and look up..

In many cases there is also a very close relationship with universities and govt organisations and other corporations who may have access to these networks at any time, also there have been RIAA board members that are staff at various universities.

Internet2 consortium members include the MAFIAA members MPAA and RIAA..

Students themselves may feel the need to try and block some networks at their own university for their own protection.

There is a very large cloud over allowing these networks to connect with you, if you aren't concerned about this at all, then you should be fine by leaving the EDU blocklist out of your sources.

DDD tried to start an alternative bad edu lists here, but no one seemed to be interested in giving any feedback on it:
http://www.bluetack.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=15867

If you do some searching here and on google you might find more examples of why some people prefer to block them out altogether.

Here are a couple of old threads answered by Firstaid where people have asked the same question, I'm sure there are lot's more if you want to look :
http://www.bluetack.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=10845
http://www.bluetack.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=11578

You may be referring to the psplist (paranoid safepeer list). This list is precompiled for our members and includes all of our basic lists together. That list is very limiting and is not recommended for most internet surfers.

The normal splist does not include the edu list.

That's all great info guys. Yes, I do use the Paranoid list and for GOOD reasons these days. It's a scary, scary world out there with bad guys like Rogers in Canada and Comcast in the US. So I have left the EDU ranges in place but needed greater understanding as to WHY they were in place. With the info you've provided here, I believe the potential downside is far worse than the potential upside of getting a slightly faster download from an EDU source.

I've seen several posts on other forums from students complaining they can't connect to any peers. Notwithstanding obvious blocking going on out there these days, even if they did manage to get on a network that allowed the connections, everyone using some of the blocklists here is further deteriorating educational bittorrent networks. Oh well...sucks to be them! Perhaps that's one more incentive for them to graduate in 4 years or less and join us adults in the real world!

Thanks guys.