University of Utah Promises DMCA Crackdown

Milo Fungus writes "The University of Utah announced yesterday to all students, faculty, and staff that "the University will disable network access for any machine for which a DMCA complaint has been received" from the MPAA, RIAA, or member of the software industry. The full text of the memorandum can be found here. (Please be easy on the server and set up a mirror if you can.)"

Comments

heh

[Lshmael]

I find it interesting that with the heavy-handed tone of the message, they still find it necessary to put at the end "Thank you for taking this notification seriously." Automatic assumption that the college students at U of Utah will either:

a) ignore it.

b) not believe it.

In fact, the entire tone of the message has a kind of "you are not adults, you are children" type feel to it. By setting up a no-tolerance policy, the administration is sending the message that it does not trust its students.

If I lost my network access, I don't know what I would do. I would have to go use the computers (running Redhat, Windows 2000, or OS X) in the 24-hour computer lab. Oh, the horror!

and what is the opposite?

[Anonymous Coward]

--I see these heinous potential fines and actual jail sentences for this 'crime'. OK, what is the opposite if someone is falsely accused, shut off, and gains a damaged reputation? Is it the same exact fine and potential jail time? Can the aggrieved student go over to the offending parties snooper hacker attack machine and pull their plug and make them sit for a few days until they "prove" they will play nice and not falsely accuse? Can any "student association" like the SAAMMJ* just accuse some RIAA group of a crime, and they are automatically found guilty? All you need is a letter and some printed up crap in an email you call a log to be convicted?

Bah, methinks the young folks might resort to sneakernet.

*Students Annoyed At Music Monopolist Jerks

I don't care really, one way or the other, I don't do that mp3 or movie download stuff, but these cyberaudiofuzz seem just so out to lunch all the time. Must be nice to be the only industry guaranteed a profit based on numbers they pull out of the same area flying monkeys come from. Seems like the rest of the planet is in a general business slowdown, but I guess being hollyweird and all they are "special" and normal business events don't apply to them, because they are "elite royalish entertainers and retinue".

Basically, screw those businesses and those jerks. Support people who WANT to make music and movies,those are artists, you can find them, the other types are just cash accumulators, don't support or even bother to listen to canned response profit monopoly formula music. I've been listening to those scummers whine about their "lost business" for a long time, last I looked none of the limo or mansion companies has gone out of business yet over in la-la land,they seem to have all the coke and champers they can consume according to the steady stream of busted actrons and formula-musicians you hear about, so someone is still making tons of cash. They just whine because it's not *two tons* of cash.

It doesnt seem too bad...

[mivok]

the university I go to claims to have received several letters from the *AA (and yes, I dont even live in america, but presumably they have also had letters from the UK equivalents) not naming individuals, but just effectively telling the university to get their act together.

In resposne to this, the university simply monitors the amount of outgoing traffic, and if this goes over an amount deemed 'excessive' (I'd guess somewhere around a gig over a day/week, possibly a little less) then they cut you off without warning (the 'warnings' come in the form of regular reminders of the rules), in the first case until the end of the month, and in subsequent cases for the rest of the year at the person in charge's discretion.

Now my argument here is that this _is not_ a bad/evil thing that curtails my rights.

Under the terms and conditions, servers are not allowed without permission from the university, and there arent any cases I can think of that would require a lot of outgoing traffic. Any traffic to and from the university computers doesnt count, which nageates uploading large amounts of work to the university. And if there were cases that did require that you had a large amount of outgoing traffic, then okay, you get disconnected once, and explain it to the network administrator, and sort out the mistake.

And guess what, this policy actually worked. Most people have stopped using p2p software, and those that do keep their usage low. (I should point out here that the main reason for the crackdon was that the network was saturated to the point that it became unusable - 10 second pings anyone?, and the distribution of copyrighted materials was the main reason the network was being saturated. However even widespread legal use of p2p software would have caused problems), and the network is useable once more (putting in a faster line is in the works, but if anyone knows a way of getting it installed in less than a week with university beuracracy or however you spell it, let me know)

Now presumably the university referenced in the article also has a similar policy. Sure the rules may not specifically say that the university HAS to make detailed checks, but I would be surprised if they simply disconnect people without warning. The rules are probably written that way to be a deterrent.
And if they do, the student simply has to ask, and sign a document saying they arent using kazaa etc.. any more (and if they were disconnected by mistake, never were).

Sure, the system is open to abuse, but I can think of a lot easier and more fun ways to piss off someone I dont like.

ignoring history and other technologies

[zogger]

--I posted that last night anonymous so it would go in at 0, but now that I see it got bumped up it doesn't matter.

You have a valid technical point, so do I. I actually have a lot of points.

Current alleged copyright affronts are analogous in a way to ridiculously mandated 55 mph speed limits, that after a few years of MILLIONS of people simply ignoring them, all of those people lawbreakers technically, our society and laws changed back to something a bit saner. I don't see any differences between sharing and massive civil disobedience of patently absurd laws like that. It used to be "illegal" for "persons of color" to enter here and there. When I was a real young kid, there was an entire small city near me that had SIGNS at the city line, along with the moose and kiwanis signs, that sign said NO N***s ALLOWED. I SAW that sign with my own young just starting to read eyeballs. Well, eventually those and other "laws" based on total stupidity got changed. It is stupid to keep making stupid things the law! Just because it says it's a law don't make it right. I can cite many other examples. that part is easy.

The basic premise of the "outrage" of the RIAA and their movie partners in monopoly profits is now flawed. It is so seriously flawed that it is past the same ridiculous level those signs were at back then. It is worse flawed than the 55 mph limit, or the new takes you two tries to flush commodes. They are hanging onto their buggywhip archaic profits model based on an entire generation's ago level of technology..

File sharing has clearly shown exactly what "songs" and "movies" are worth, given technology advances. These bloated luddite monopolists are just frantically trying to hold on to profits that are no longer justified. It has nothing to do with what is right or wrong as pertains copyrights, that is clearly tangential, although that is their cry they are being "stolen" from. Nope, THEY are the ones who across the board, across the nation, who have refused to drop their prices from the easy availablity of advanced technology. they are SO FAR into price gouging and other criminal acts it ain't funny. THEY are the clear cut badguys here, their "law" they cite is about as relevant in todays world as you must hire a small boy to walk in front of your horseless carriage swinging a lamp, a law that used to be on the books some places.

If your hard drives were still going for hundreds of dollars for a 10 meg hardrive, when you knew they could be made much cheaper, and the hard drive manufacturers had colluded in an organization called the HMA hard drive manufacturers association to lock in prices the same as always, this would be called extreme abuse, it would be illegal, they would be sued not only into compliance with normal business reality but most likely out of existence and new corporations and executives would be taking their place. If an underground industry had arisen that assembled their own hard drives and were swapping them with each other for cheap, what it actually cost, then would these hard drive tech swappers be "illegal hard drive pirates"?

Not so the music and movie industry. They got an obvious joke fine for collusion in their price fixing schemes. They have been busted so many times for payola to keep the over the air music market locked at the top 40 drivel label I have lost count. Their media monoply companies like clear channel and a few whopper news orgs have hijacked the PUBLIC airwaves and own them now. They are serious serial criminals hiding behind a facade of respectability, and allowed to stay there by inertia, threats, bribery, intimidation. Screw them guys, they are crooks, gangsters, and dangerous for society and our economy..

These universities with legal departments and some deeper pockets should be ashamed they are not part of a massive class action to tear down that RIAA and get them sued out of business based on that simple principle. Songs and movies are NOT WORTH what they are being charged for. No

This letter is a sad joke.

[FIRESTORM_v1]

Thanks to the persons mirrioring this!

From the looks of things, they are complaining if you are serving illegal stuff. Again no one states anything about downloading the same material. Quote:

File sharing software is most commonly used to download music and other
media. Many do not realize that this software may turn your personal
computer into a server, or upload site, even if that was not your
intent. Files on your network connected PC may then be illegally shared
with every other person connected to the World Wide Web. It is
imperative that the file sharing capability of these systems be
disabled. If you do not know how to disable this function, please
contact the Help Desk at 581-4000.

It looks like that the are only concerned with serving illegal files rather than dlwnloading them. I know of several places that are like this already but have a don't ask/don't tell policy about downloads (provided you don't gobble up their bandwidth)

Although I don't use any P2P apps (legally or otherwise) I think that this whole panic really needs to be studied further at who the *AA is griping about. Those that download or those that serve...

Just my .02c

Re:$1

[ConceptJunkie]

OK, you got me there.

But when was the last significant invasion of American soil. 1812?

So there's only 9 out of the first 10 that you can't find blatant violations of. It's still an abysmal record and Congress, the Supreme Court and the last 10 Presidents or so should be ashamed of that record.