Slashdot Mirror
Congress Asks Universities To Enforce Copyrights
Wes Felter writes "In CNet, Declan McCullagh writes that members of Congress are concerned that universities are not enforcing the 1997 No Electronic Theft Act which made simple copyright violations into a federal crime. Should universities be responsible for tracking down illegal sharing on their networks? Will ISPs be next?"
Universities have enough to deal with concerning their students, before they start wasting their money policing filesharing.
Just let them teach the classes. Let the students worry about the law.(or lack thereof)
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
At my school off campus trading is something that's been actively looked down upon... however trading over the campus network is encouraged... I think if anything is going to happen a standard needs to be found first.
Not to worry... the thought police will be around to handle this sort of thing soon.
-=sig=-
Maybe the university administrators have more important things to do (like, say, running a university) than hunting down students dling mp3's. Maybe congress doesn't understand that some of us have REAL jobs that require more than going around and kissing other people's asses.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Why is there always an assumption of guilt when dealing with file sharing?
This type of draconian heavy-handed measure is an insult. Why is the burben of proof on the individual and not the government?
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Either someone is taking the mickey, or this politician really needs to get a sense of proportion.
And now instead of not getting to graduate because of thousands of dollars in library fines, students get to be ousted for copyright infringement.
Ironic, however, this connection between P2P and a Library. Wha?
Create a P2P *wireless* sharing device. Just load it up with stuff and go cruise around at your favorite public sharing area... I'm sure that we'll see this in campus yards as soon as students lose the right to steal their music and other stuff. They'll just create their own network to share stuff on...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Educational institutions are no more responsible for student file swapping than they are for student drinking and driving. "Loco parentis" is NOT the responsibility of educational institutions, thoght many folks think they are and should be, including the university administrative class known as "Diaper Deans"
Students are adults and responsible for their own behavior.
The NET Act asserts criminality in the event of deliberate money making or valuable materials copying as opposed to simple breach of copyright.
Is Congress asserting that universities are overlooking that or merely that copyright breaches are possible and not investigated?
I went to the University of Missouri - Columbia which suffered from severe bandwidth shortages due to file sharing. So they implemented some traffic fingerprinting technology (PacketHound) to keep the file swappers from eating all the bandwidth at prime time, then let them play during the middle of the night. I suppose similar technology could be used to totally disallow file sharing, as I think it has to be all or nothing. You cannot really watch each file traded and then check for copyrights.
Scott, Keeper of the Crystal Flame
Wait a minute...
If they think that ".edu" network admins (who are often students themselves) will enforce stupid RIAA rules, they are, in effect, asking the foxes to guard the henhouse!
Seriously, I remember, at my old university [no names given, for obvious reasons] that the admins used to have close to 50+GB of mp3s archive... =)
This being said, this has also been the case in the past 3 companies I work with... Maybe this is the solution to piracy: ask that kind of admins to take care of the piracy problem... then, turn around and pretend the problem has been solved! Case closed! =)
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
At our school, we seem to have someone that carefully watches everything. This man must spend hours a day trying to stop people from using Kazaa and other P2P programs. Everyonce in a while he'll get an e-mail from the MPAA stating that someone has been sharing a movie that's not even in the theater yet and they'll sue the school if it's not stopped. As long as you have an open network, people are going to find ways to share files. Putting pressure on the University is just going to make life a lot more difficult for administration and for students.
Once they are forced to monitor, they will be legally accountable for any 'leaks' or 'actions' they don't catch. As well as the end user of course.
Its a dangerous thing to hold accountable 'carriers' of content that flows across them..
Whets next, the phone company? The US Postal service? FedEx? A gun store? Wal-Mart?
How about AMEX when someone uses a purchase for illegal activities...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Under a 1997 law called the No Electronic Theft Act (NET Act), it is a federal crime to willfully share copies of copyrighted products such as software, movies or music with anyone if the value of the work exceeds $1,000 or if the person hopes to receive files in return. Violations are punishable by one year in prison, or if the value tops $2,500, "not more than five years" in prison.
I hope they mean 'value' as in 'sticker price' and not 'value' as in 'worth money' because Mozilla alone has saved me **AT** **LEAST** $1000 in therapy and counseling over pop-up ads, spyware and stupid-ass animations so its overall value is probably much higher than $0.
What about other OSS like Enterprise RedHat? Can't you install that on a bunch of boxen for the after you pay the $1500 price tag?
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Just to be safe, college administrations have to assume that all files are copyright by Hollywood and the RIAA. No original work should be done on college campuses. It's just too risky - when big business, backed by jackbooted government thugs, will question every file that every student has. Instead, colleges should buy all course materials straight from Hollywood and the RIAA, with (of course) Digital Rights Management software on every computer giving big business the right to monitor everything that goes on.
As an edu admin myself, I have a repsonsibility for the content of my networks, which includes those nodes attached to them.
The same way that i am liable for illegal use of unlicensed software, not the premises. (Bizarre, and a pain, hence why I'm a tad zealous...)
This is a serious issue. We are not talking about a single misguided politician here. This is the result of an insidious, deliberate, and concerted effort by the *AA to abuse language in order to confuse people's sense of proportion and their sense of ethics. False analogies, shock-treatment and abuse of language are very effective propaganda tools, and that is what we are seeing here.
See what RMS has to say (from http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html) :
Fight this language FUD! Refuse to use FUD terms. Read the above mentioned article on gnu.org and point people to it. It can go a long way in putting things in true perspective and controlling the power of the *AA.
the problem with that is the utter laziness and apathy in the general american public.
College studen get's 5 years in a federal prison for violating a copyright. 99.997% of the american public could care less. It's the reverse NIMBY... or it wasn't in my back yard so why should I care.
The local University here took a poll of 1000 people for a project.. and over 78% did not care about copyrights and though that current laws were good. while the same group had a 95% of not knowing WHAT the current laws even were. (First question asked, and then second question asked.)
Hell if people cant be bothered to learn about basic laws that affect their day to day lives, you cant expect them to care at all about some college punk kid who's life is getting completely ruined for no reason what-so-ever.
welcome to america.. we have so many laws we can put you in prison for a long time for any reason we want.... but if you want to get off light.. kill or rape someone... those are our lower crimes.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
every time there's a story like this, someone will
come in and say that filesharing has legitimate
purposes as well etc etc..
BUT.. fact is.. the vast majority of, and I mean vast, files
on p2p are illegal.
Now.. consider this.. say there was this little bar.. where 5% drank beer and were jolly happy.. and the rest, 95%, were trading illegally stolen properties like furniture and microwave ovens and whatever.. and they were doing it casually, and everyone in the entire city knew about it.. it was widely known in every media like internet, tv etc.. so what do you think the police would have done? Exactly.. and it would have hurt those 5% who actually did what you're supposed to do in a bar.
Would this imply that all bars should be shut down because people could do illegal stuff there? Hardly.. BUT.. if there is a place that is known for illegal stuff, even though it also has legal uses, shold it not be shut down?
So basically.. it is easy to observe p2p networks.. those who are legal, should be let alone.. those which are mostly illegal, should be shut down.. it doesn't matter..
and in fact, the vast majority of p2p networks are mostly illegal in their contents. Because let's face it, there is simply NO WAY the majority of files on big p2p networks WON'T be illegal.. you could say it's the right thing to do to give humans the benefit of doubt, but it is a simple facet of human nature that if people can share illegal digital files on p2p networks, they WILL do so.. and it is also so in real life.
If 9 out of 10 people in a place are doing criminal stuff, surely that should be enough to shut down the place, even if it would hurt the rest 10%.. this is how it works elsewhere, why shouldn't it be the same for p2p?
If that's the case, most of the sites I visit will be classified as art sites, where I can truly appreciate the female form. Especially with another female form.
Any filesharing servers that were on our networks protected them selves with heavy logging. The computing department became surprisingly lenient when faced with evidence that the largest downloaders were on their staff. Of course our esteemed leader was less than competent, not even know which official servers were running. Foxes guarding hen houses is not such a bad idea. They will protect them for their own and they will know best how to. Not only that but i imagine that they are heavy net users and will throttle filesharing during normal hours for their benefit as well as other users. The best person to see if a system is vulnerable is a good cracker... employ them instead of fighting them.
Colleges will generally go as far as possible to avoid bringing in the police. Cynically, it's bad public relations to be connected with crime. It's only been in recent years that most campuses have been shamed into encouraging rapes to be reported. Rapes are the obvious case where we should want the police in. But what about gay sex in the states where that's still illegal? What about kids having a beer? Smoking a joint?
The law is traditionally less restrictive on the privileged - trusts them to have a native sense of good that may be more refined that that in the code books. Thus Geo. Bush Jr., faced with a law that said he had to serve in the military, got into the National Guard and got away with skipping duty - didn't even show up for that - for a year. Okay, so there are times where this exception is regrettable. But his grandfather stole the skull of an Indian child from a cemetary as a Skull & Bones prank. There are pretty serious laws about this, but they weren't applied - he was a privileged student.
Still, the law is a regrettable intrusion that should only be applied when human beings are not behaving themselves - when real harm is being done to someone other than themselves. Busting a student for drinking a beer or sharing a song does more harm than good to people. Beer and songs are both positive things, on the whole. And anyone who has behaved and studied well enough to get into college should be trusted to be not as in need of supervision by the law as someone who had neither the internal discipline nor intelligence to get there.
A society overly concerned with enforcing laws - especially laws which serve business but not human interests - is violating the fundamental right of humans to live a good life as they see fit. Policing, in itself, is not a virtue, and is a value only to dictators.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
So university administrators should be held reponsible for the actions of their clients? Among other things, remember, students are not (typically) employees.
If this flies, then I think members of Congress should also be held personally responsible for any and all undesireable actions taken by any resident of the United States. Obviously they could be doing more to prevent criminal behaviour. Because they are not, because criminals still roam the streets, they should be held liable.
Can anyone point to a good place to read more about all the idiot ideas floating around in Congress? I'd like to get a better handle on who the real bozos are who float this kind of stupid shit.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
I'm sitting here wading through a mountain of requests from the media companies while I work at my campus helpdesk. They demand that we "deactivate their accounts" and "block their IP addresses" immediately or face punishment ourselves.
Here's a copy of the email that they send:
--
RE: Unauthorized Distribution of the Copyrighted Motion Picture Entitled
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Dear xxxxxx:
We are writing this letter on behalf of New Line Cinema, a division of Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P. ("New Line").
As you may know, New Line is the holder of rights under copyright, including exclusive distribution rights, in and to the motion picture(s) listed above.
No one is authorized to perform, exhibit, reproduce, transmit, or otherwise distribute the above-mentioned work(s) without the express written permission of New Line, which permission New Line has not granted to 0.0.0.0.
We have received information that an individual has utilized the above-referenced IP address at the noted date and time to offer downloads of the above-mentioned work through a "peer-to-peer" service.
The attached documentation specifies the location on your network where the infringement occurred, the number of repeat violations recorded at this specific location, as well as any available identifying information.
The distribution of unauthorized copies of copyrighted motion pictures constitutes copyright infringement under the Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 106(3). This conduct may also violate the laws of other countries, international law, and/or treaty obligations.
Since you own this IP address, we request that you immediately do the following:
1) Disable access to the individual who has engaged in the conduct described above; and
2) Terminate any and all accounts that this individual has through you.
On behalf of Warner Bros., owner of the exclusive rights to the copyrighted material at issue in this notice, we hereby state, pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 512, that we have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by Warner Bros., its respective agents, or the law.
Also pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we hereby state that we believe the information in this notification is accurate, and, under penalty of perjury, that MediaForce is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the exclusive rights being infringed as set forth in this notification.
Please contact us at the above listed address or by replying to this email should you have any questions.
We appreciate your assistance and thank you for your cooperation in this matter. In your future correspondence with us, please refer to Case ID xxxxxxx.
Your prompt response is requested.
--
Methinks that this mediaforce place needs to be firebombed. Take a look at their website and you'll see some pretty creepy things that they do, like 24/7 scanning of P2P, IRC, FTP, and other networks for copyrighted works. Worst of all, they reinject corrupt copies of the data back into the networks to much downloads up for the users.
If I worked there I'd just go home and slit my wrists every damn day
Certainly, I think it's important for universities to put an end to the free-flow of information through their campuses. I mean, imagine the damage caused to society if universities just flagrantly allowed students to share intellectual property without a whim for who owns it! What a disaster it could be, as profit margins begin from students acquiring someone else's IP. I cannot imagine anything worse.
Why bother.
There are murders, rapists, and other offenders of such unspeakable crimes walking the streets in our country, yet a college student downloading "Margarita Ville" is a criminal that deserves to be arrested for breaking a copyright law. What the hell is going through congress' minds? We have a budget crisis enough as it is and we can't even rid our streets of homeless people but we'll spend millions of dollars protecting an already overly-wealthy industry from an 18 year old kid that just wants to listen to a song? Where are the priorities in this country?
Well, my college only had a statement that basically said "don't commit fraud or hack anything using our resources".
However, having a policy against something is not at all related to actively monitoring it. If you rent an apartment from me and the lease says "no dragging a keg inside and trashing the place", surely you'll agree that it's not my job (nor should it be) to install video cameras in the living room just to be sure. The same thing is true here: they can tell you not to share copyrighted files, but that shouldn't imply a responsibility to go through your shared files and determine which are copyright violations.
Which is not to say it won't be their responsibility by the time the lawyers are done with them...
Just cut out the middleman. The government wants someone else to do the law enforcement? Deputize the Netwoirk Admins...Uzi and pocket protector snandard equipment.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
What? Merely a "federal crime", and not an act of terrorism yet?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Why are they screaming about P2P? What about radar detectors? Radar detectors are there to help drivers break laws--they have no other purpose. Breaking the speed-limit laws makes a driver much more likely to kill someone.
Unfortunately, people killed by speeding drivers don't make campaign contributions. File-sharing hasn't caused any deaths that I know about...
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
I work for end-user support for a major university. Just last week I had forwarded to me a letter advising us to police one of the computers on our network for a copyright violation. (By the IP addy and computer name, I think it's a student computer.) This proposal by congress just seems like part of a larger campaign of the various entertainment conglomerates. (Check out the letter; there's a real rogue's gallery there.)
...
We still haven't found the computer in question. I'm still not sure what we would do about it if we found it. (Probably ask the user to delete it, or remove it from the network.)
My question... this seems like something automatically generated. Is it? Have other universities received similar requests?
---
From: MPAA@copyright.org [mailto:MPAA@copyright.org]
Subject: Unauthorized Distribution of Copyrighted Motion Pictures
MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA, INC.
15503 VENTURA BOULEVARD
ENCINO, CALIFORNIA 91436
UNITED STATES
Anti-Piracy Operations
PHONE: (818) 728 - 8127
Email: MPAA@copyright.org
Friday, February 21, 2003
Via Fax/Email
RE: Unauthorized Distribution of Copyrighted Motion Pictures
Reference#: XXXXXX
Dear abuse@XXXXXX.edu:
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) represents the following motion picture production and distribution companies:
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.
Disney Enterprises, Inc.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
Paramount Pictures Corporation
TriStar Pictures, Inc.
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
United Artists Pictures, Inc.
United Artists Corporation
Universal City Studios, LLLP
Warner Bros., a Division of Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P.
We have received information that you are providing Internet access to and possibly hosting the above referenced internet site, which is offering downloads of copyrighted motion picture(s) including such
title(s) as:
The distribution of unauthorized copies of copyrighted motion pictures constitutes copyright infringement under the Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 106(3). This conduct may also violate the laws of other countries, international law, and/or treaty obligations.
We request that you immediately do the following:
1) Disable access to this site;
2) Remove this site from your server; and
3) Take appropriate action against the account holder under your Abuse Policy/Terms of Service Agreement.
By copy of this letter, the owner of the above referenced Internet site and/or email account is hereby directed to cease and desist from the conduct complained of herein.
On behalf of the respective owners of the exclusive rights to the copyrighted material at issue in this notice, we hereby state, pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 512, that the information in this notification is accurate and that we have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owners, their respective agents, or the law.
Also pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we hereby state, under penalty of perjury, that we are authorized to act on behalf of the owners of the exclusive rights being infringed as set forth in this notification.
Please contact us at the above listed address or by replying to this email should you have any questions. Kindly include the above noted Reference # in the subject line of all email correspondence.
We thank you for your cooperation in this matter. Your prompt response is requested.
Respectfully,
Thomas Temple
Director
Worldwide Internet Enforcement
Because if the files you were exchanging were legitimate, you wouldn't need to use peer-to-peer systems like Gnutella, Freenet etc etc, which add a lot of inefficiency just to make it harder to find the source of a file. If what you are sending weren't in some way illegal, you would just stick it on a web page.
You have just demonstrated a woeful lack of understanding of the fundamental technologies, both of client server architectures (upon which ftp and web servers are based) and peer-to-peer technologies such as gnutella, freenet, etc.
In a peer to peer environment, the more demand a particular file has, the more widely it becomes available, and the quicker it is to download. This is precisely the opposite of the "slashdot effect" so commonly seen on traditional, client/server setups (such as virtually every web page on the planet). Debian's apt-get and Gentoo's emerge would both benefit greatly, in terms of performance, by distributing their files (source tarballs, debs, ebuilds) via a peer-to-peer architecture rather than the ftp, html, and rsync client/server architectures they use now. Indeed, once keyrings and GPG signing has been implimented, they are likely to move to this, both for redundancy and performance purposes.
Properly designed peer to peer is the future of legitimate filesharing, as it removes one of the critical bottlenecks that has plagued the internet since its inception. Whether the specific implimentation is gnutella or, with our current jackbooted thugs in Washington, more and more likely Freenet, isn't really all that relevant. Performance requirements and the need for robustness and redundancy are already leading more and more so-called mainstream uses of peer-to-peer technology.
Oh, and by the way, TCP/IP is fundamentally a peer-to-peer platform, so next time you hear some fat, filthy rich, and corrupt media moghul talk about the evils of peer-to-peer technology, likely in the context of lobbying congress to ban it outright, keep in mind that they are talking about banning the fundamental design of the internet protocols themselves.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Universities are for teaching students, and smaller universities don't have the resources to track down everyone who shares files accross a network. Larger universities don't have the resources because they're using their extra funds for research, which is far more valuable than cracking down on copyright law violations, especially from cracking down on the population that can't afford the copyrighted products in the first place.
As a college student, I've probably gotten about 20 MP3s through filesharing services, bought three CDs for $50, and three DVDs for $60. All of those purchases were made my freshman year, when I thought my money would go far. It is also worth noting that I downloaded the MP3s from two out of the three CDs before I made the purchase. Since then, I haven't had money to purchase these items, and I don't think that my filesharing would do anything to discourage me from purchasing CDs, because I don't have the money to make the purchases in the first place.
In the long run, we're all dead.
Has anyone in Congress considered the fact that enforcing such strictures will likely soon be impossible? Even now, the act of policing how people are using their computer would involve invading their privacy.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the natural evolution of this technology will be to add encryption. On top of that, perhaps use mix-net or other anonymizing technology. Run all the traffic over port 443. How do you police that? Bet you can't wait to tell your boss that the $50,000 you spent on a Packeteer is down the toilet. We read recently how Microsoft is collecting information about your computer every time you do an update. Perhaps we should pass legislation which mandates that people disclose the contents of their hard drives without warrent? Give me a break.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
At the university that I worked for the tech to person ratio was around 1 to 120 computers. At the time the tech was required to also keep several different servers running. In a college of about 500-600 computers we had 5 techs full time. We were required to manage Novell, NT, Unix servers, handle web page creation for classes, and early on handle student accounts (later taken away due to a central control issue at the university).
Student web pages were particularly questioned -
- pornographic content
- selling things on university equipment
- copyrighted materials
- etc....
Had I aggressively policed that then servers would have been down, labs would'nt have worked, professors couldn't have done their work, you name it and from the dean's office it would have looked like one of the techs was just sitting in his/her office doing nothing all day long.It has gotten better there btw. In addition to the 5 techs they now have 2 people whose sole job is to take care of servers (and figure out how to distribute/manage licensed software, and email complaints, and viruses, and step in and do regular tech stuff, and fix the occasional home users computer, etc)
At the university level they throttled the bandwidth for those services down to a crawl - still workks just too slow to be usefull
If they aren't aggressively policing their networks its because they kind of have their plates full.
I highly suggest working for the tech department of any college/university even part time - they are almost always hiring and almost always need the help- great and diverse tech education!
" I'm not sure why filesharing is any more of a problem on a university campus than, say, underage drinking or drug use."
Its not any worse, its not really a problem except that it affects serious money interests.
Love Stallman or hate him, but his rant on copyrights that he did a decade ago is so on the mark that its scary.
Copyrights as they exist today can't be enforced in a connected age unless the government places serious roadblocks to a free society.
A copyright or patent is a bargain between society and the creator. It is not an inherent right as many seem to think.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Universities could start some sort of new "Campus Police" department whose job it would be to uphold the laws.
Thought crime is being defined as we watch. Witness this horror:
Members of the House of Representatives subcommittee that oversees copyright law said at a hearing that peer-to-peer piracy was a crime under a 1997 federal law, but universities continued to treat file-swapping as a minor infraction of campus disciplinary codes.
"If on your campus you had an assault and battery or a murder, you'd go down to the district attorney's office and deal with it that way," said Rep. William Jenkins, R-Tenn.
Yes, Mr. Jenkins really compared sharing music to murder as moral equivalents requiring similar responses. This is a large step above the usual loaded language of "piracy". Equating the two actions morally represents the destruction of morals and replaces them with laws guided by self interest rather than moral sense. The punishments are equivalent too. The average murder or rape conviction gets you five year in jail. Violating the oxymoronically named NET act will get you five yars as well. That is the essence of thoughtcrime. Orwel's nightmare society had no laws, as all that was demanded was strict obedience in word, thought and deed. The punishment for violating the one law in any way was, of course, the same. This is very distrubing.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.