Downloading videos from college campus

[diale11.livejournal.com]

  This is just a quick question to all the people who are currently living in a college campus. I'm going to be living in one of my college's dorms this upcoming semester, and I know that there are strong rules about illegal downloading and p2p sharing. This really wouldn't be an issue, but I depend on downloading Arashi videos to keep myself entertained. 

So my question is, do any of you download large quantities of Arashi videos without consequence?  What other alternative would you recommend? I'm hoping for positive answers. I don't know what I would do without my daily dose of Arashi. The college is North Carolina State University, by the way.

I'll appreciate all the comments!

Comments

[jjjookie.livejournal.com]

Woah, I go to UNCC. The semester I lived on campus, I downloaded without hesitation and never got in trouble.

[jackie.livejournal.com]

As long as you're downloading from 3rd party sites like Mediafire and Megaupload, you should have no problems. The only issue may be if you're using a free MU account and it cuts you off due to too many people downloading. (I would recommend just getting a paid account through them - it's worth it!)

[arashiforyou.livejournal.com]

well, i try to avoid downloading as much as possible because i dont want my computer to overflow with arashi videos.
there would be some people that upload their videos on their journal for you to watch with out downloading. like tokubetsu. those are the ones i follow.
but i download a few videos. once i'm done watching them, i delete them.

i hope you find out what you'll do :)

[augustfai.livejournal.com]

I go to UNC. I know that if you download A LOT, they'll send you a cease & desist notice. I don't actually know what 'a lot' is, but I downloaded about a video a week and I was fine--no one ever caught me. I really suggest setting up your own wireless, though, it helps a lot more.

[xxpeopleerrorxx.livejournal.com]

I went to UCLA and when I lived in the dorms, illegal downloading was a pretty serious offense there. I found out that you're most likely to get caught when you torrent because I still downloaded subbed videos from LJ and didn't get caught, while two of my friends got caught torrenting music files (one was sued for $3000 by a music company and the other one had to attend an illegal downloading workshop and got a "stern" warning from housing). I think if you use sites like mediafire or megavideo, you should be fine and don't download large quantities in a short period of time even though the dorm's super fast internet connection will be very enticing.

Good luck in college! :)

[eyeslikefirefly.livejournal.com]

I agree that you should avoid torrents and other P2P (if they even exist, I have no idea). I downloaded dramas back in 2004 and was fine, but that was before files were large. You might want to stick with the smaller, sometimes lower quality, files.

[swimmer-chen.livejournal.com]

never had a problem before. Just know that there may be times of failure cause of internet issues (too many people using it at the same time). Figure out when it is and you'll be fine xD

[kanu-x.livejournal.com]

I dl from mediafire and megaupload.
Not caught yet and still hoping.

Good luck! need our dose of Arashi :)

[yuizaki-libra.livejournal.com]

My advice would be to stick to direct hosting sites like MU and MF and definitely avoid torrents and p2p.

[meikimari.livejournal.com]

honestly, it all depends on which school you're going to. like when I was in first year, my school had bandwidth rules, and I kept going over. But other from that, they would never say anything about illegal downloading. They don't check those things...:/ But with what I'm reading from the comments below, it's a good idea just to stick to the sites like MF and MU. torrents are always a hassle anyways. ^^"

[flame-on-3104.livejournal.com]

I've never had any issues at my dorm. I downloaded from MU and MF to my heart's content. But then again, I didn't download as much as I do at home. Probably one or two vids a day...

[ma-i-do-a-ri.livejournal.com]

i leech of the bandwidth of my college all the time coz wow it's faster than my home anytime~

[jaele.livejournal.com]

I agree with what some others have said, that direct download sites should be fine (they were for me). The only people I've heard of getting into trouble were using torrents, so... :)

[yygall.livejournal.com]

Avoid torrents and other p2p completely - don't even touch it. learn to love direct downloads (mu, mf, fileserve, etc) and if all else fails, streaming is good too. sites like pandora and tudou are fantastic and updated really quickly too.

[ambrosse.livejournal.com]

Direct download won't get you in trouble as much as torrenting and p2p.
As long as you're not dragging down the bandwidth and such to make them investigate, then I wouldn't worry about it.
-laughs-
I download a lot of stuff while at school but just a couple things a day.

[sarki92.livejournal.com]

i find that most arashi videos are on tudou, and u can watch them there without downloading anything although buffering can take a while. really good if u want to watch any of their past/present variety shows like mago mago arashi, a/d no arashi, vs arashi, himitsu no arashi chan and arashi ni shiyagare - hope this helps =]

[potatoos.livejournal.com]

I went to the US for college and it was fine to download from MU and MF, so long as you don't use torrent (where there's P2P). Most who use torrents do get a warning email, but MF and MU are OK :)

I know some people said that MU may take super long due to the large number of people dl-ing, but I never had that problem. It's even faster to dl in the US than in Singapore here using MU!

[mikarocker.livejournal.com]

I go to FIT in New York and dorm there, and they supposedly have rules against downloading as well. I download as much as I want and I've yet to get caught or get notification that I've been caught.

I'm going into my fourth year so I've been doing this a while xD

The only thing is they have a ban on torrenting and they've somehow disabled it so you can't even download a torrent file or connect any sort of torrents. So if it's a torrent I would be careful or refrain from using them.

[frothies.livejournal.com]

oooh, if you're going to use direct download sites (MF and MU) then you should have an internet download manager. :) it helps!

[xsimple-love.livejournal.com]

I go to school in Austin and when I lived in the dorms, torrenting was off-limits. Using MU was hard because other people DLed stuff too, so it's best to stick with MF or pay for an account!! I think you'll be okay with that!!

However, if you REALLLY need to torrent, try using a cloaking application, though I don't know if those will work and schools are pretty good at tracking your ISP and ID together if you have to register to get onto your school's network.

[cool1412.livejournal.com]

I go to school in Austin too!

Yeah, if you want specifics, I heard that they attempt to extract illegal downloads based on your bandwidth. For my school, if you live in a dorm, you buy their internet and they allot you however much bandwidth. If you use it up too quickly or something, they'll get suspicious. Torrents cause this since people are uploading from you as you download, etc, so whatever you do, do not have torrents or file sharing programs whatsoever. But as for mediafire and megaupload, for Arashi shows, it's only like 1 GB at a time for high quality, and that's just about equivalent to watching a streamed movie or watching a bunch of YouTube videos, so they don't get suspicious. But at the same time, I didn't download a gazillion Arashi videos in bulk, usually just seeing the 3 weekly episodes, and sometimes extras like guest shows or movies or dramas (though I eventually just watched the variety shows from Hachi.A since she got it up faster and in HQ than downloading it). It'll be file sharing programs that they track, because those are constantly on the move.

Don't worry about it too much, they drilled that whole "We're going to charge you fines out of the kazoo" lecture and I feared for my life and looked into this the first week of school because I needed Arashi. So I asked around how they would know if you're illegal downloading and that's what everyone told me. Just get rid of anything that has file-sharing like torrents, music sharing programs, etc. (Your bandwidth is also eaten up by viruses, but that's a different story.)

[momijikun23.livejournal.com]

So I'm not a college student so im reallly sorry i can't help but i saw this and i spazzed!! I mean you're older than me since I'm a HS student but since i don't know any Arashi fans it's WONDERFUL to know there are other Arashi fans here in North Carolina! Well i assume since its called NC state university and since it has the state name and yea i feel stupid now!

[icedragontmr.livejournal.com]

Direct downloading shouldn't be much of a problem, but if you are, or thinking about, torrenting, I'd be careful with that. Torrents can take up a lot of bandwidth like someone playing WoW or Star Craft. I'd just be cautious with them. Can never be too cautious about something, lol.

[captain-snen.livejournal.com]

Wow! 4 other people here in NC! We should start an NC fan club ^ ^

I got in trouble from my internet company (version) for torrenting. I use streaming sites like tudou.com. You can just search for the show in Japanese and then the date is something like 20110731, for example.

[lisaaayeoo.livejournal.com]

well.. i've always download arashi in my uni library :P i got blocked once from the library admin but for only one hour! xD well that was once.. i've never get into trouble for downloading. except that once. i think downloading from MF or MU is not a problem.. =)

[yuui1010.livejournal.com]

NOW, this is a nice advice for us too.
Will be extra careful too.

[hannah-arashi.livejournal.com]

i usually have no problems with it on my campus :) and i download quite a bit when I have time <3 I go to a uni in FLorida

[banjinojoshin.livejournal.com]

Pretty much everyone said it, but MF and MU (as well as any other direct downloading sites) are your best friends. Before I started college, my main method of downloading was torrents, and my school set up the policy to block all p2p altogether to stop illegal downloading. Once I changed my sources and got used to using direct download sites, it was smooth sailing from there (and I download a LOT). I'll also second someone's suggestion to get a download manager (I use jdownloader personally...it's quite helpful).