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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. '"
What if it's MY music? I cannot share it?
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.
RomSteady - I came, I saw, I tested. GamerTag: RomSteady / http://www.romsteady.net
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.
Hrm, here at ISU the local campus LAN is just about all anyone needs. Would kinda suck if people couldn't use that anymore...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
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...
You think I'm paying to go to school so I can learn? I'm paying for 5 years of quick music, movies, and porn, damn it. Turn off my network access and I'm going to community college.
---------------------------
This has been happening at colleges all over for some time. Last year when I was still living on campus they sent out letters to each room saying something similar to this. Everyone did it anyway. I never understood why they didnt just filter them out .. but I didn't work in the IT department.
Anyway, the guys upstairs found a few wi-fi networks in the area and ran a cat5 out the window and down to our room so we had unrestricted (and suprisingly faster) access then the rest of the campus.
There is no spork.
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!
Does this mean students can swap illegal software and media offline on CDs? I'd think it more efficient that way anyways. Who is with me?
"The lesson to be learned is not to take the comments on slashdot too literally." --Vinnie Falco, BearShare
I'm sick and fucking tired of the retards who run P2P filesharing software 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 source tarballs, ISOs of Linux distributions, and so forth). Everytime I see some moron running KaZaA, It is all I can do to avoid purchasing a lethal weapon and killing them.
"We want to alert you to the fact that many of you are risking complete loss of access to the USC computer system and both disciplinary and legal action," wrote USC dean of libraries Jerry Campbell and vice president of student affairs Michael Jackson in the e-mail.
...
this could explain that
The network is capable of preventing crime, and now someone's actually doing it.
At the University of Central Florida, they have a no p2p policy also. I got caught last year and had to pay (about) $30 to go to a "computer usage" workshop for an hour. 20 minutes of the hour were spent watching an episode of Futorama. Students who got caught twice had their network access permanently revoked. The letter that I recieved gave me a URL that contained the "evidence" (in the form of a SniffIt screenshot) that I was using a p2p network.
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).
At my university (private school in east Texas) there is no official policy on using filesharing programs. However, if you use too much bandwidth the other students will track you down and make you pay. I remember one day when I stepped out of my room and saw a lynch mob headed my direction. Fortunately I convinced them it wasn't me. (And it really wasn't, either.) I don't think they would have believed me, but I let them examine my computer for themselves.
in my school (georgia tech), we just use something called buzzsearch, it's a webbased windows shares/samba scanning/indexing/searching service. The source for it is available on sourceforge, so people at other schools can start their own services. So far, all p2p networks are allowed, including kazaa, imesh, gnutella, etc..
All this banning seems extreme. I know of a couple of kids (one at Penn State) that follow a more reasonable rule. Students are given a basic set of etiquette rules, and warned about downloading copyrighted material. Each student is given a limited amount of bandwidth per month, which is monitored. If they go over, they better have a good reason, or they'll lose their net privileges for the rest of the term. This method allows for high tech access to information, and educates them at the same time. Isn't that what school is for?
Why don't the students just build their own wireless network for filesharing? Could be too difficult....
My school implemeted a similar policy several weeks ago, citiing a warning letter from the BSA. I imagine this is something that will happen more and more in coming months as 1.) the BSA sends out scare letters and 2.) Schools get sick of having legitimate educational traffic degraded for P2P file swapping.
Come test your mettle in the world of Alter Aeon!
...give you a basic bandwidth per month, and if you want to go over, you have to fork out lots more per month.
(Cisco has a solution that does this, if I remember right...but I can't remember what it's called.)
They were one of the universities to block napster when it started becoming a problem, but they later reversed that. I'm no longer on the campus network having moved to my own appartment but when I was on the network, even when there was massive amounts of file sharing it was still considerably faster than my 1.5/768 dsl is now, so I don't think bandwidth is the real issue as some have suggested. They flag down those that consume a lot of bandwidth and send them warnings, and sometimes suspensions. (I have a friend that shared files over irc and got a nasty letter about using too much bandwidth)
My freshman year (a while ago) the "my network neighborhood" feature of windows worked and many shared files that way. That went away the following year much to the annoyance of many students.
This e-mail isn't really news, it's more of a reminder of a policy that was already in place.
On an only slightly related note. The campus network is handled by ISD (Internet Services Division) which has nothing to do with the CS department. The CS department has an eternal grudge with ISD. (As do a good number of CS students)
USC also seems to take complaints about the students overly seriously. My friend got spam sent to him to which he replied "Fuck you" along with some other unpleasentness. The spammer complained to USC who sent my friend a warning about proper conduct.
They can still access data on the VT network at full speed, but after they hit that last VT gateway into the Internet, that speed is halted. Severely.
Here is the whole copy of what was sent to all students here:
Dear Student:
This email is being sent to all students at USC to make sure they have the same information about copyright compliance.
Introduction
The University of Southern California is committed to the education of its students. Part of the educational process includes the provision of internet connections for students in classrooms, residences, libraries, eating establishments, and other places on campus. Students who live off campus may also access the internet through USC's computers via modems. Over the past two years the university has made efforts to make students aware of policies governing the use of its computing facilities and systems to enhance their educational experience and keep them from violating university, state, federal polices and laws that would negatively impact their student status.
As a part of this ongoing effort we want to alert you to the fact that many of you are risking complete loss of access to the USC computer system and both disciplinary and legal sanctions. Below is an overview of how students are placing themselves in jeopardy by inappropriately using USC's internet connections.
Is File Sharing Worth Losing Student Privileges at USC?
You are undoubtedly aware of the development of file-sharing software such as Napster, Gnutella, and Hotline, also known as peer-to-peer networks ("P2P networks"), and the fact that the use of P2P networks to share copyrighted material, such as movies, music and software, can violate the rights of copyright owners. As you probably know, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that the majority of Napster users are directly infringing federal copyright law by sharing music files without the permission of musical artists and recording companies who own these materials.
Copyright infringement occurs whenever you make a copy of any copyrighted work - songs, videos, software, cartoons, photographs, stories, novels - without purchasing that copy from the copyright owner, or obtaining permission some other way. Infringement also occurs when one person purchases an authorized copy, but allows others to reproduce further "pirated" copies. For example, if a student purchases a CD and creates an MP3 copy on his or her hard drive, and then uses a P2P network to share that MP3 copy with others, both the student and those making copies are infringing the owners' copyright rights and violating federal copyright law.
USC prohibits any infringement of intellectual property rights by any member of the USC community. As an academic institution, USC's purpose is to promote and foster the creation of intellectual property. It is antithetical to this purpose for USC to play any part, even inadvertently, in the violation of the intellectual property rights of others. The USC policy regarding student use of USC computing resources clearly states that a student who reproduces or distributes copyrighted materials in electronic form without permission from the material's owner may be removed from the USC computer system and face further disciplinary action.
Further, infringing conduct exposes the infringer to serious legal penalties. In response to the growth of infringement through P2P networks, the recording and motion picture industries have increased their efforts to identify and stop those who download unauthorized music and video files. Organizations such as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) can and do monitor P2P users, obtaining "snapshots" of the users' Internet protocol addresses, the files they are downloading or uploading from their P2P directories, the time that downloading occurs, and the Internet service provider (ISP) through which the files travel. (Gathering this information is not a violation of the users' privacy rights, because the user has voluntarily made his or her P2P directory available for public file sharing.)
Once this information is obtained, RIAA, MPAA and others can demand that an ISP remove any infringing copies from its system and may obtain a court order directing the ISP to identify the infringing user and to cut off the infringing user's access to the ISP's system. Further, if the user is determined to have infringed copyright rights, whether through P2P networks or other means, he or she can also be subject to sanctions such as the destruction of all unauthorized copies and monetary damages. In some cases, criminal sanctions - imprisonment and fines - may be imposed.
As an ISP for its students and faculty, USC has received an increasing number of notices from RIAA and MPAA identifying the IP addresses of USC students who are sharing copies of music and videos without authorization. USC will be forwarding such notices to the individual students involved and taking further steps to ensure that the infringing conduct ceases immediately, including, where necessary, depriving that student of any access to the USC computer system and further disciplinary sanctions. Obviously, if the complaining organization decides to take further steps to identify and prosecute the infringer, such conduct also runs the risk of incurring sanctions under federal copyright law, which can include monetary damages, and, in cases that are sufficiently extreme, criminal penalties - both imprisonment and fines. Copyright law provides no exception from liability for university students.
You should be aware that sharing music, videos, software, and other copyrighted material is a violation of law and can expose you and those with whom you share to legal sanctions, as well as sanctions under USC's own policy. Please do not put yourself, your friends, parents, and USC in the awkward position of having to confront such issues. We trust that you will take this issue seriously and conduct yourself accordingly.
Sincerely,
Jerry D. Campbell Dean of Libraries and Chief Information Officer
Sincerely,
Michael L. Jackson Vice President for Student Affairs
Peer-to-Peer file sharing is a no-no
WAP's are bad news
Further reading indicates that you can get shut off for a short period for file sharing and have your jack turned off for good for having a WAP. Apparently last year somebody had an Airport up and it took down 3 floors in one of the dorms.
Both of those seem like pretty heavy penalties. That is *exactly* how the policy went at the beginning of this school year. I think they may have sent out another reminder about the wireless though. I guess they realized that nobody was reading the agreements and it wasn't fair to simply shut their jack's off with no warning.
Anyway.. guess Universities are getting tired of wasted bandwidth. Here is a graph of bandwidth usage at Boulder over the last 48 hours and here is the base site with lots of statistics, in case you're interested.
Ben
"I either want less corruption, or more chance
to participate in it." -- Ashleigh Brilliant
Just make sure you shut of sharing with other users :)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
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.
I mean, they are simply warning students that the RIAA has been watching the scene and they are attempting to compartmentalize the students from the greater network.....for the good of all file swappers too.
I think that the message is "be discrete about your swapping, use FTP, CD's and other media for the transfer...don't advertise and especially don't gloat that you are getting away with it."
Remember also, they don't want to get involved with policing everything on the net. That's the angle that all ISP's are taking against the RIAA/DMCA lawsuits now....pretty much "it's not our business what the customer has at their house, they don't have it on the server here, so it's none of our business." I think that the school is just attempting to give themselves a little "plausable deniability" in this matter.
As P2P goes, "advertising" all of the songs that you have at one location is dangerous. That's a known weakness. Perhaps this will get solved, so that donors do not have to have their IP's revealed...
Exactly. Bandwidth at a University, although seemingly endless, is a precious, limited resource. So anyone P2P'ing is hogging precious bandwidth others can use for porn...er, gaming...er, studying, yea, that's what I ment. :)
I do tech support at the University of Pittsburgh and Besides the bandwidth suckage of p2p there is another problem. The Riaa has been hassling the university tirelessly about file sharing. It seems that alot of computers on campus were getting hacked and many of them were serving Warcraft 3. We were contacted and threatened with fines and all sorts of legal crap. The university is now instituting a similar ban to the one that we are discussing here and it is important. There are a few advantages that a university cannot pass up.
1. no lawsuits, if it's an enforced policy than the specific violators can be prosecuted.
2.Less pay wasted on sending tech support to remove the multitude of viruses from kazaa downloads.
3.MORE BANDWIDTH to be used for legitimate uses.
Here's the thing: why should the university provide a way for people to trade copyrighted material?
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.
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.
Heh.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
My school does this (well, did... they've increated their bandwidth now so it's free reign). If you go over your 24-hour cap, the router drops your packets and reduces your overall bandwidth for your IP address.
USC receives much of its financing, especially its prestigious Film School, there can be no doubt that this was financially motivated on USC's part becuase of political pressure from the MPAA. This new rule is not a coincidence, not that the ruling is not economically sensible in some regards.
www.enthea.org
USC is a private University in Los Angeles and is closely tied into the film and music industries there. Of course, they'd cow tow to their 'benefactors' in the RIAA and MPAA. What do you expect them to do? Have the balls to say no? No way!
This is probably more of a matter of bandwidth usage then anything else. I know at Gatech the uplink was being maxed out constantly in the fall and spring last year causing even ssh to computers on campus from off campus to be slow.
They won't officially tell us what they did to fix the problem but they sure didn't come out and say we couldn't use file trading programs. What it basically looks like is they selectively drop so many packets from the typical file sharing programs to lighten the load so that other types of packets have no trouble getting out. By dropping only the occassional packet they can let the connection stay alive and not interrupt the transfer but effectively slow it down and leave more burst bandwidth for other stuff.
It seems nobody has gone to Cooper Union's website and do a little reading. Cooper Union is a private institution. It was founded by Peter Cooper, a wealthy industrialist in the 1800s. He also did this without ever learning to read. So, he took much of his money and set up The Cooper Union. The university runs on an endowment set up by the founder. Therefore, the school isn't paid for by taxes. Cooper Union does own real estate and land, so rents from people leasing the university's land and properities also help pay for the upkeep of the school. The tuition is completely paid for students. They still have to pay for books, an annual student fees, and living expenses (i.e. dorm), but the education itself is paid. The tuition's value is an estimate based on competing universities' tuitions that offer similar programs. By the way, it is really hard to get admitted into the school (this is also reinforced by several surveys, including U.S. News). There are less than 1000 matriculated students total, so there are no more than 150-200 freshman slots available. This is how the school can keep costs down for making tuitions free for students: limit the available seats.
What if it's MY music? I cannot share it?
No, you cannot share it, because the music you think you wrote probably isn't your music. It belongs to the music publisher who published the particular sequence of four notes before you did. Under the "substantial similarity" standard used by United States courts, there are fewer than 50,000 possible distinct melodies in the Western musical scale, and there are hundreds of thousands of copyrighted songs published by major music publishers who have cross-licensing agreements with one another. Do the math. What's the probability of avoiding a lawsuit? What's the probability of winning if you can't afford legal representation?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Not necessarily specific pressure, but the fact that the U gets a ton of entertainment industry money cannot have totally escaped the thought processes of the USC administration. They have buildings named after movie stars; there is tons of implicit pressure to defend the industry's interests whether or not such pressure is ever made explicit.
Nonetheless, from what I've seen, USC has done or at least tolerated some significant moves that deserve commendation. The current policy is a complete shift from their stance during the Napster/Metallica fallout, when they refused to shut down napster ports and spokespeople pointed out that Napster allowed for many things besides trading "illegal" files. Also don't forget that USC publishes the Online Journalism Review, who published articles on both sides of the napster and copyright battles. I would guess there is a split at USC among the administration regarding what to do about copyright infringement and that the current policy probably reflects exasperation at getting threatening letters about USC students sharing mass quantities of files.
they didn't ban p2p. They just warned students not to use it illegally. Why is this distinction lost on so many people here?
Others have given the clues:
/. articles. Go google for them a bit ...
The administration assumes that if you are using PSP you are making illegal copies. Very few people record their own music. So few people do this that it's not worth taking into consideration. If you are using P2P, they will assume that you're guilty of copyright violations, and it will be up to you to prove yourself innocent.
Also, it has been pointed out that you're at a school that gets a lot of money from the movie and recording industries. If you are allowed to distribute your own music without first signing it over to a recording company, you will shoot down the whole reason that those companies exist.
This is what it's all about, dummy. The Internet is providing artists like you with a new channel to your audience. That channel isn't under the control of the recording industry. You don't have to sign over the rights to your music to distribute it on the Internet. This is one of the things that the RIAA is trying to stop. They've realized that if they don't stop it, they'll be out of business.
This is all documented well enough in other places, including previous
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Jes, they can sniff & log IPs and MACs. But both can be cloned. A malicious student could get another in deep trouble.
Any draconian authority has to be careful not to get used as a hammer for personal revenge.
I spent my first year in the dorms. Life was hell and the school did MUCH to make it worse. When I left and moved off campus to a nice apartment, school became so much better. On campus students are NOT people, they are CA$H cows to be milked for as much as possible. I picked up a room mate and the cost was not much more the I was paying to the school.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
From a previous post:
The USC policy regarding student use of USC computing resources clearly states that a student who reproduces or distributes copyrighted materials in electronic form without permission from the material's owner may be removed from the USC computer system and face further disciplinary action.
and:
Organizations such as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) can and do monitor P2P users, obtaining "snapshots" of the users' Internet protocol addresses, the files they are downloading or uploading from their P2P directories, the time that downloading occurs, and the Internet service provider (ISP) through which the files travel. (Gathering this information is not a violation of the users' privacy rights, because the user has voluntarily made his or her P2P directory available for public file sharing.)
The unavoidable conclusion is that USC will listen to the RIAA and kick students of the school networks if they claim infringment.
The potential for abuse is manifest, despite the proported condern from student privacy. Students without access to computing resources may not be able to complete assingments and so the ban ammounts to expulsion. Will the University just take someone else's word for such a serious charge and punishment? It looks like the process could short circuit many student protections all for the sake of the lowest form of publicaion in the world, pop music.
Their definition of copyright violation is a bit out of wack too:
Copyright infringement occurs whenever you make a copy of any copyrighted work - songs, videos, software, cartoons, photographs, stories, novels - without purchasing that copy from the copyright owner, or obtaining permission some other way.
Bullshit. My copies of my property are my business and are covered by fair use. Republication is a violation of copyright and reasonable numbers of coppies do not constitute a republication.
Factual errors like this from a major university are disturbing. If they don't get it, who will? Are the same idiots who wrote this letter in charge of prsecuting students? Great!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Nononono... It's merely out on lease. Infact, the Labels have the right to repossess your music at any time.
On that note, how else is the industry supposed to recoup their loses when they are used to the business model "One product per person"? Puttin aside the gouging they engage in, I seriously wonder how people think that is fair? I bought a blender, I own it and if the neighbor wants to borrow it, great, even if for an extended time. But there is only one blender at all times and I suspect eventially, you'll want it back and the neighbor will either A) be inconvinienced or B) Buy his own. That used to work for the Record Labels too. Now it doesn't. They distribute one copy, and you have the ability to make an infinite number of copies from yours. Your property, right?
In reality, while it's a abuse on the customer's part, it's really the record industry's failure to adapt adequately that's the problem. By all rights it IS your copy and you should do what you want with it. But it's also the company's right to ensure they make a profit off of it, but WITHOUT violating your rights. So what's a Label to do? Copy protection, but we all know that game. New formats, but nobody's buying into it. They're in a unique situation... Unless THEY get a clue, we're going to end up involuntarily strangling them to death and dump the recording industry into a recession. Yeah, I actually believe that.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Just for a reality check.. when I bought this place, I found myself saddled with a shit phone line and no broadband available. My average dialup speed went from 53k ALL the time to 26k on a good day. Bloat being what it is, 26k is no longer adequate even for everyday browsing (and I don't load images or javascript). As a result my time online has more than doubled yet I get half as much reading and other such work done, even tho I've dropped most of the "just for fun" sites from my daily rounds.
I'd hate to be a student trying to do research on a 28k connect.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
P2P is an expensive problem for campuses. Here are some interesting statistics about network usage at Cornell University:
http://www.cit.cornell.edu/computer/students/bandw idth/charts.html
Over 55% of total dorm bandwidth was from Kazaa/Morpheus!
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?
University networks aren't there so that you can do whatever you want (though most of them let you get away with it). I don't see the problem with network admins not providing you with more services you can justifably need for your studies, and they do not include P2P. If you do not like the AUP, find a provider that gives you what you want. If you can't, that still doesn't allow you to break that contract.
There are two points here - bandwidth hogs and copyright infringers - often related but not necessarily. People who only use a lot of bandwidth for serious purposes is ok, I don't think any admin will kick you for downloading a full set of linux distros etc.
But it's not there for you to get your latest Britney Spears album or the Tron 2 DVDrip. And as I read the actual email, you will only lose access if you commit crimes (read: copyright infringement) using the university's connection. Does that really surprise you?
So I find the universities have the full right to decide:
- Wheather they wish to offer access to any P2P networks.
- What to do in case of copyright infringement, like terminate the contract.
But I would say they can not:
- Prosecute someone for having a P2P client running, but only downloading/serving legal programs.
Of course, IANAL, but I think the last case would be about 0.00001% of the cases.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
They cut off hotline? Glad I haven't lived in the dorms in three years.
Maybe not, but it certainly is their responsibility to provide a necessary and appropriate service to their staff and students. Being able to download reseach papers or look up a useful web resource is what that service is for. P2P song swapping and Quake3 parties are not. When the latter starts interfering with the former, they have every right to act, and they should do so.
The only possible objection I can see to this is if they have some sort of service agreement with their students that says the students get Internet access for whatever purpose they want, with no strings attached, and they're taking money from the students on that basis. Maybe they do, but where I went, they made it quite clear what the connection was for. They then quietly ignored things like games playing, while the games players had the common sense to do it outside of the busy hours so as not to get in the way, and everyone was happy.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
No, it isn't. The average undergraduate student in the UK currently graduates with something like UKP10,000 of debts, and it's rising fast as university costs and tuition fees increase year on year. Unlike the US, however, where the university funding, scholarship and employment set-ups are reasonably well integrated, there are few means available to UK students to sort this out when they graduate, leaving them at the mercy of banks, which are not always reasonable in their behaviour.
Many of these students are going to be seriously in debt for the next decade or more of their life, leaving them with limited options for trivia like buying a home or raising a family. I was lucky enough to avoid it myself, as I got through the system just in time, but many of my friends and family haven't been.
If you're going to make nasty comments, please get a clue first. Otherwise, you're going to upset an awful lot of people by rubbing salt in a deep and wide open wound.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Will I still see USC FTPs running, etc?
Wichita State: Dont ever go down this road, it is a bad bad idea. I pay to live here, and I should get to do with MY data as I please on a line I pay for. Blocking ICMP is damn near bad enough, but I can deal.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
As a graduate of Rose-Hulman (I attended during the last four years running we were #1 on U.S. News) I agree that $100,000 is a pretty reasonable estimate. And they don't give out full-tuition scholarships...I was lucky to get about $7k/year. They aren't making money, either. Most development and equipment purchases have to come from donations (some extremely generous alumni are out there!).
We had a very similar problem with network bandwidth. Junior year I was lucky to get 3k/s and couldn't download any distros, couldn't get required files for my classes, and web surfing was painful. On one of the campus-only newsgroups, there was a pretty big thread of, umm, negative comments about the quality of the network staff. Some of us got talked to a little bit, but it brought the issue to the forefront and a "town-hall meeting" was scheduled over the network situation. It was standing room only, and lasted two hours past expected...everyone wanted more bandwidth (we had only two T1's) and proved that RHIT allocated less bandwidth per student than a dial-up ISP would allocate for modem customers. Shortly afterwards, two more T1 circuits were installed.
It didn't help. Within weeks, the network was just as slow. It was still slow until the beginning of senior year. At that time, the network department announced that it would be throttling certain types of traffic, and there would be an informational meeting. One of the major points of interest of that meeting was a chart: percentage of bandwidth in different traffic. I believe that over two-thirds of the bandwith was peer-to-peer filesharing traffic. Another interesting point: five individuals were producing over 50% of the filesharing traffic.
At that point everyone saw red and wholeheartedly approved the throttling, which was time-of-day based; drastically reduced percentages during the day, zero filesharing in classrooms (laptop school, network ports at every desk), and half-way throttled on weekends. The effect was immediate and normal internet use vastly improved.
On a college campus, there are enough people and enough music files to go around, if that's your thing. You just have to go out and actually interact with people. It's not cool to sit in your room racking up 150 Kazaa connections, using the school's bandwith as an alternative to interactin with people outside your dorm room.
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While I agree that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion would seem to say that widely sharing copyrighted recordings over a P2P network is an infringing activity, I don't think the students doing the downloading are infringing, as I understand the opinion and the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA), which seems to explicitly authorize people to make copies for their own personal use. The AHRA was invoked as a defence in the Napster case, and the court ruled that it doesn't protect widespread sharing over the Net. I don't think the opinion concluded the same for receiving such files.
IANAL, and I would welcome opinions from those more expert than me, but I think USC may be talking out of its *ss here.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
I don't know what school of music this guy went to
Most judges aren't musicologists either.
but he is forgetting all about rests, whole notes, sixteenth notes, thirty second notes, etc. This increases the number of possible distance vectors between notes.
The standard for copying in U.S. copyright law is not an exact match but rather "substantial similarity". The short/medium/long scale can easily be interpreted as quarter/half/whole or sixteenth/eighth/quarter for a particular piece.
What I want to know is where on earth does it say that we are limited only to four note melodies???
Read the beginning of the article There was a case involving the "Hallelujah Chorus" by Handel and "Yes! We have no bananas!" by Frank Silver. Handel's publisher won that one, setting a legal precedent that four notes can easily be enough to establish substantial similarity.
I have personally played many eight note melodies
Two eight note melodies that match in four notes may be considered substantially similar.
Will I retire or break 10K?