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Handling Campus AUP (non-)Violations?
speby asks: "I am a CS student at Northern Illinois University and I recently compiled a working peer-to-peer file web-based file indexing system. I refused to sign their agreement that says I violated their Acceptable Use Policy because I sincerely believe I did not violate them. My system scans a large portion of my school's network hosts looking for openly accessible, anonymous Windows File Shares, and bandwidth usage is minimal. The AUP does not mention scans and I did not 'break' or 'crack' security in any way. I agreed to shut the service down for a period of time until I can figure something else out. I do not agree with their stance on this issue and I believe I have a right to design, implement, and make available such a service. I certainly did not see anything in their terms of service that would disallow such a system. Do these other universities that allow this kind of system care? Why can this system not exist here?" I have no problem with a student being told to shut down a homebrew service if they find it offensive, but I do have a problem with them treating said students like criminals, even when they do comply with their wishes. What should students do, when they are bullied by their colleges into signing violations that are more stringent than the situation merits?
"I was contacted by the IT department after a few weeks of its public running. I did not actively promote the system. It works in ways similar to the file search engines like the ones at Iowa State University and Georgia Technical Institute. In terms of programming, this idea is so trivial anyone could do it with the help of some simple scripting and a lightweight database."
I'm a student at Georgia Tech and a heavy user of Buzzsearch. We used to have a previous system in place that was actually a resnet-created invention (browse.resnet.gatech.edu). However, with the increasing quality of buzzsearch and the aging code that powered browse.res, it was shut down and now our file-sharing is a student-run affair. Perhaps the biggest reason why our college support this (and many others should as well IMO) is bandwidth usage. Namely, external bandwidth usage (aka, the stuff your school PAYS for). It doesn't cost anything for our school to have me send a file from me to my roommate, but it costs a recurring fee of an OC12 line to send something to my friend in New Hampshire. Realistically, you could EASILY come accross to your school saying that you're saving their bandwidth costs wtih such a system in place. Plus, keeping it student-run will keep down on their liabilities. Oh, and you could always "lose" some logs if there's an incident :)
If I were you, I'd be fighting tooth and nail to keep that service up. You are browsing PUBLIC information. You're not exploiting some bug in an operating system. You're not spreading a virus accross campus. You're simply allowing students to find the stuff they want in a faster, less costly, and more privatized manner.
Put it back up and don't stop until they pull the plug. Then bitch and moan load enough to get them to allow you back up :)
Tim Dorr
Owner/Manger
A Small Orange
You should take a look at this line:
Unacceptable uses include, but are not limited to, the following
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Always standing, I am a tree awaiting the lightning. -Samael, Crown
Hasn't any of these students learned that the word "Peer" scares the living bejoovies out of netadmins running open networks these days? Any thought (or mention) of p2p brings to mind 100% bandwidth utilization.
Instead, call it a "Client-side SAN", or my favorite: "Internal Email Network over Windows-Induced File-Transfer-Mechanisms" (or IENWIFTM) the 'email' label gives it a freindly name.
Oh yah, and next time you get caught doing this, have your BOFH calendar handy. (This calendar gave me "Domain Controller not responding". It would have been a perfect explanation on your windows network. Tell them your proggie was actually a DC backup that kicked in and it was notifying all the windows clients that it was up.)
HURD - Hurd's Under Research & Development
Ahh..but remember that Windows Shares are "opt-in" -- by default turned off. Users enable them to allow sharing of files. Not like doors which are accidentally left unlocked.
Perhaps a more appropriate analogy would be walking into a job fair, and looking around to see who is offering pamphelets.
10b||~10b -- aah, what a question!
start a pirate wireless ethernet in your dorm (i'm assuming you live in a dorm)... that'd be kind of cool, like college pirate radio.. but for warez :P
Which could explain why colleges are so terrible at it. [teaching people how to think]
I think it's fair to say that you take out of the college experience what you put into it, and most people who graduate with a bachelor's degree aren't particularly wise or insightful individuals. But it seems to me that it's easier for a person to learn to think critically in college than out of college.
College is nothing more than an environment, like a petri dish for teenagers. Some of them will keep their heads down, finish their assignments, and walk away with a piece of paper. Others will thrive, and emerge much better off for it.
I don't know. Maybe I'm idealistic about college because I dropped out of it and never got the chance to go back.
I write in my journal
Exactly.
I'm work as a Unix tech at a University and I see this all the time. Rather than take what turns out to be a rather minor telling off (IE me in the office telling them what they did is bad and not to do it again) and throwing out a quick appology they'd rather stand there arguing the toss about it until the technician involved gets so fed up with them he escalates the incident higher and the student gets into real trouble. Just for being a cocky little sod.
We had a female student here almost get kicked out of the Uni for eating in the labs. She'd do it everyday and everyday someone would catch her while doing the rounds (We don't allow eating and drinking in our labs). She always accused the techs of lying and picking on her and then would carry right on doing it. She used to line up chips on the keyboard and eat them off one by one. Our academic director even caught her once and she still said we were lying.
After months of dancing around like this it was refered to the student discapline board and she got a final warning with the threat of being kicked out of the University.
We don't know what would have happened next since she failed her course and left anyway. However if she'd just accepted the initial telling off from whichever technician caught her and then waited until she'd finished in the lab before eating that would have been it. End of story.
Some people have no sense however. Tip for the story poster. Don't argue with it. Just sign the appology and forget about it. It'll be easier in the long run than getting kicked out of school.
What crack-induced fantasy are you living in? Colleges and universities are - believe it or not - businesses. *Huge* businesses. It's not like suing the coffee shop on the corner. Whatever rights you think you have, they don't extend to automatic authorization to access every computer on their network, and I'll bet your AUP says as much. The college is not going to wither because some snotty undergrad said "lawyer".
I used to work at Ohio State University in the central IT department (provides general services to campus).
There was this guy, who was pretty smart and worked for the residentual halls for a while. He knew too much for his own good because he was constantly battling the director about how she was doing things. (His way was right most of the time.) Eventually, they fired him. However, he left with a lot of good information about how the residentual networks worked (specifically, in this case, he knew the DHCP IP Address ranges for at least his dorm.)
Six months later, on a Friday evening, his dorms network went down. He deduced that there DHCP had stopped handing out IP Addresses. After calling to get the issue addressed, and being ignored, he set up his own DHCP server, restoring service to his entire dorm. He was a hero to his classmates (but I bet it still didn't get him laid... but that's another story)
The director of the residentual internet services through a raging fit and was going to bring him up on charges and have him expelled for conducting a denial of service attack. When the director of security at Ohio State Security saw it for what it was, he patted the kid on the back, said be a good boy and stop fueding with the residential director, and sent him on his marry way. No suspension, no legal charges, no nothing.
Therefore, my suggestion to you is there are a lot of whack-jobs at a University, but there are a lot of reasonable people too. Find the reasonable ones to help you out.
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