USC To Students: No Sharing Files

jukal writes: "copy-paste from a Wired article: 'Students at the University of Southern California could face a school year without computer access if they are busted swapping movies and music online. In an e-mail message to all students, school officials warned that using peer-to-peer file-trading services could force the university to kick students off the network. '"

Comments

Even if it's MY Music?

[Squareball]

What if it's MY music? I cannot share it?

Re:Even if it's MY Music?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Not with the University's resources. Get yer own DSL.

Amazing, but that's how it'll work in the "real world" too, someday!

Re:Even if it's MY Music?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they still the university's resources when they contract with me to provide a service for a fee? If so, perhaps you should reconsider your relationship with your own internet provider, natch? An even better example would be to consider the housing system. I pay a fee to live on campus. In effect, I am a de facto tenant. As a tenant, I have certain rights. Primarily, the campus cannot waive my rights concerning search and seizure.

That said, the campus also has a right to impose restrictions upon its tenants and contractees. However, we should have the right to refuse those terms. If they are going to change our contrat in the middle of the game, I should be able to declare it void and demand a refund of my payments. Otherwise, it is unfair.

Re:Even if it's MY Music?

[Squareball]

I did. My point is that if it's MY music and I share it it should be ok according to the article. The article talks about copyright infringment. But I don't think that USC is worried about people violating copyrights, I think they are worried about the cost of bandwidth.

Re:Even if it's MY Music?

[keefebert]

You should read a housing agreement at a University. You are not a tenent, and do not have the same rights. And, if you want to live there, you have to agree with these agreements, or you live elsewhere, and there is not much you can do about it. Plus, network contracts at a University don't fall under the housing contract, they are under computer use policies, which are written in a way that gives the University complete control over the network.

Translation

[RomSteady]

If you're going to do it, use a dial-up account with your own ISP, because we can't afford all of the bandwidth.

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see, how are we addressing this issue this week? Isn't this the way that we *want* piracy to be addressed? By going after the *pirates* instead of the *technology?* I wonder how many reactionary Slashbots will attack USC for taking *exactly* the approach that these same Slashbots have recommended so many times.

Hat's off to you, USC. Keep up the good work.

Re:Good

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Isn't this the way that we *want* piracy to be addressed? By going after the *pirates* instead of the *technology?*

Slow down there. The article is light on details but it seems to me that the university is banning all P2P traffic, not just copyright-infringing traffic. You can insert the standard hyperbolic "But 99.9999% of P2P traffic is infringing" but it doesn't matter: They certainly do seem to be going after the technology, not the content.

Re:Good

[GMontag451]

Let's see, how are we addressing this issue this week? Isn't this the way that we *want* piracy to be addressed? By going after the *pirates* instead of the *technology?

Yes, this is the way we want piracy to be addressed, but its being addressed by the *wrong people*. It is not USC's responsibility to stop illegal activities over their lines any more than it is AT&T's responsibility to stop fraud over the phone lines, unless a warrant is involved. It is law enforcement's responsibility to stop activities of this sort. Imagine your local phone company started tapping your lines for no reason and overheard you talking about how fast you just went in your car and sent a police officer to go give you a ticket? This is exactly what's going on at USC. If they are served a warrant, then by all means, monitor the network, but only if they are served a warrant.

Even SMB filesharing?

[autopr0n]

Hrm, here at ISU the local campus LAN is just about all anyone needs. Would kinda suck if people couldn't use that anymore...

Just shape them

[WetCat]

Put traffic shaper on them - let them use equivalent of 28800 modem. Just enough for browsing the web and work but lousy for file sharing...

[Cooper Union, NYC] My school already does that...

[izx]

My school/univ, The Cooper Union, is supposed to be a top-ranking undergraduate engineering college (per US News rankings), but in the dorms (aka "student residence") here, ANY kind of file sharing is banned. The admins have taken proactive measures, including blocking ALL inbound access, and blocking ALL one/two-way UDP traffic. Only outbound TCP is allowed...and "criminal" ports like 1214 (Kazaa), 6699 (WinMX) and a host of other ports are blocked.

What also sucks is that the UDP block also cuts down ICMP ECHO (aka "Ping") packets...it is a crying shame that an Electrical Engineering student at "one of the best engineering schools" cannot verify network response times!!

Let me add, however, that I understand the file-sharing thing...our pipe is just 3xT1, and they wouldn't want to bog it down with pr0n and mp3s.
Ideally, they would use Packeteer or some other program to prioritize non-file-sharing traffic and/or throttle bandwidth to and from "criminal" ports. The UDP/ICMP block, however, is inane.

But hey, in case you didn't know, the Cooper Union is the only 4-year private univ in the US that gives a full-tuition scholarship worth about $100k over four years to every student admitted!

I have only one thing to say....

[symbolic]

Good.

music/movies or all files?

[bp33]

The wired article doesn't make it clear if all P2P activity is banned or just movies and music. I suspect from an administrative standpoint they'll shut down the whole P2P thing rather than check to see what is being shared, and if you have legal right to distribute it (e.g. photos from last weekend's kegger).

It also doesn't say if intranet P2P is OK, or if they are just forbidding P2P to/from outside the university.

Of course the USC network admins know this directive is foolish. File sharing happens via IRC, FTP, HTTP, IM and many other forms, straight client-client as well as through various tunnels and gateways between P2P networks. It's not likely that they want to become police, either.

This directive serves the university only two ways (ok maybe three).
1) It gets the RIAA off their backs for a while.
2) It keeps the clueless from using P2P networks - only the clueful will know how to still share files at will, and they are less likely to get caught and spell trouble for the University.
3) It reduces the load on their network.

All three are temporary gains but they must think that's better than nothing. Once again we see somebody attacking the symptom (P2P) rather than the problem (stealing copyrighted works).

OR...

[Anonymous Coward]

peer-to-peer file-trading services could force the university to kick students off the network.

OR ...could force the smart students to develop an anonymous, encrypted filesharing system and squash the whole plan. woops! now what? maybe a better solution is just plain traffic-usage capping.

Re:They should have done this long ago

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sick and fucking tired of the retards who download tarballs and linux iso's on my University's network. Thanks to them, during the first and last two weeks of each semester, I see my bandwidth get killed (which I use for legitimate purposes, downloading free music mp3's, downloading winamp software ). Everytime I see some moron running linux, It is all I can do to avoid purchasing a lethal weapon and killing them.

Why USC?

[aquarian]

This is no surprise, considering USC is right down the road from Sony, Universal, Disney, Paramount, etc. It supplies more wetware to the film and entertainment industry than any other, and takes more money from said industry to support its world class film, music, and business departments.

No problem.

[camelrider]

Schools provide students' network access as an aid to their education.

If a student feels he/she must have p2p there are private ISP's out there who are willing to offer their services for a price. Most people in the real world do pay for their internet access.

There is no reason that a student should expect his/her school to sacrifice bandwidth or risk legal problems to support the student's habit.

Re:The actual email

[Ibag]

As an academic institution, USC's purpose is to promote and foster the creation of intellectual property.

Wasn't there once a time when the purpose of an academic institution was to foster an enviornment in which its students could learn and grow and come up with ideas that would benefit the world? Now, they are just reduced to trying to make intelectual property? Has the world really become that greedy, short sited, and capitalistic that not even our schools are safe?

I can imagine a conversation at the university:

Dean: How much intelectual property has your class deveoloped this week?
Professor: I'm afraid they haven't come up with anything patentable or profitable.
Dean: They had better come up with something soon that we can use. Your tenure is riding on it!

responsibility

[blisspix]

some comments seem to suggest that it's a bit lame that the university is doing this to get the RIAA off their backs. my response is, it's perfectly reasonable. I work in a library. We could say, sure, copy and download what you like, but be aware of your copyright responsibilities, and we'd get laughed at. Therefore, the library has to make decisions to ensure that we are not held responsible for someone else's mistakes. responsibility for copyright compliance generally lies with libraries, archives, and other similar bodies. The university is just acting to ensure that someone doesn't bring down a massive suit because some dweeb decided to download Britney's new album. Yes, the administation is responsible for that.

Besides, who really needs that much online access. I got through university on dialup.

And thinking ahead, would you show up at work and download several gigs a day on Kaazaa?