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

Text of Memo, just in case

[TheRedHorse]

To: All University of Utah Students, Faculty, and Staff

From: Stephen Hess
Associate Academic Vice President for Information Technology
Stayner Landward
Dean of Students

Date: March 14, 2003

Subject: Illegal Sharing of Copyrighted Materials

The purpose of this memo is to officially notify all students, faculty,
and staff, that it is a violation of federal law and University policy
to share and/or distribute copyrighted materials without the permission
of the copyright holder. Violators may be subject to civil and criminal
prosecution under the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA), as well as personal sanctions specified in University policy.

The University has received a significant increase in complaints from
representatives of the motion picture, music recording, and software
industries. The majority of the complaints are directly related to the
use of file-sharing software, such as KaZaA, Gnutella, and similar
programs.

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.

Industry representatives aggressively monitor the Internet to discover
incidents of illegal file sharing. When violations are discovered, they
contact the network owner and/or the Internet Service Provider and
demand that the offending device be disconnected from the network. To
protect the user and the University from further culpability under the
DMCA or University policy, the University will disable network access
for any machine for which a DMCA complaint has been received.

To restore network service, the user must contact the Help Desk and
arrange to sign a document stating that the user has disabled the file
sharing function of their software and has agreed to discontinue all
illegal file sharing activity. If the user is named in additional
complaints, they will be referred to the appropriate University
committee for further review and action.

Action taken by the University to remedy a violation does not preclude
the copyright holder from seeking civil and/or criminal prosecution.
The law specifies civil liability of not less than $200 or more than
$2,500 per act, and criminal penalties up to $500,000, and/or
imprisonment for up to 5 years for the first offense.

Thank you for taking this notification seriously.

$1

[elmegil]

to the first person to forge an email and get someone taken off the network for something they didn't actually do.

Re:$1

[Lazarus Short]

[$1] to the first person to forge an email and get someone taken off the network for something they didn't actually do.

$2 if you make the victim the boss of the person responsible for the memo.

Re:$1

[djcapelis]

$2 if you make the victim the boss of the person responsible for the memo. Oh come on! Go for the memo writer himself, and send the letter to his boss!

Re:$1

[91degrees]

Do I get the $1 if I get an essential computer taken offline (e.g. University webserver)?

Re:$1

[0x0d0a]

I think the proper course of action is to find a hole in the webserver, plop an actual P2P server on it, and then send lots of bogus complaints about workstations in.

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.

common

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm posting anonymously to avoid self-identification. But I go to a Big10 school where this has been policy for three years now. Network access is shut off, with no notification, and the student then has to clear his/herself with IT to get back online. Usually it takes the student a few days to figure out what's going on -- and then they have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get to the stage where they can even sign saying they fixed the problem.

But, then, all MAC addresses are tied to a netid nowadays to prevent this lag time...

no biggie

[Anonymous Coward]

this is how most schools do it anyways (at least for first time complaints).

they turn off your network, you find your network not working, you call and find out what the deal is, they tell you, you fix the problem, you call and say so, they turn your netowrk back on.

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!

Let the games begin...

[clambake]

for (IPAddress i=UTAH_LOWEST_IP; i UTAH_HIGHEST_IP;i++) {

sendMail("We found a DMCA violation on this IP:",i);

}

It's such a bad thing to make policies where descions are arbitratily made before evidence is collected.

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.

This is Sick

[Flamerule]

I can see how the sentiment for something like this might develop in the university's administration, but this is fucked up.

They'll shut down network access for a student automatically, at the first receipt of any DMCA complaint? No investigation, nothing? I'm sure groups like the Scientologists, whom /. has covered previously, will find this much to their liking. Some student has posted information on a school site that some group doesn't like? Send a DMCA complaint, and the school won't blink twice before taking that shit down.

I'm sure the school thinks there will be a great deal of volume of complaints, much too many for it to deal fairly with each case, so it's better to just err on the side of caution and presume students are guilty from the get-go. Well, there will be a large volume of complaints, now that the school has completely dropped trow and spread cheeks.

[RIAA guy]Hey, Valenti! And you, BSA whore! Point your complaint mills at the University of Utah! They don't even check 'em![/]

We've all heard about crap like complaints from the MPAA (under penalty of perjury!) about someone sharing sharing Harry Potter files, only to find they're actually Harry Potter book reports. Yes, I'm sure the amount of legitimate stuff is swamped by the illegal copyright infringement, but that's no excuse for an institution with as important a role as a university to bend over like this.

Re:This is Sick

[leviramsey]

The thing is the DMCA basically requires that; if they fail to shut down at the first complaint, then they're considered to be as guilty of any infringement that occurs as the party that actually infringes.

Re:This is Sick

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there is *some* flexibility in the law. The material has to be taken down "expeditiously". At my university, we notify the computer owner and give them a chance to respond before shutting them off. Most of the time they don't even know they're sharing files - when they find out, they delete them and that's that. No interruption of service necessary.

One thing that sucks about this guilty-until-proven-innocent law (from a reluctant enforcer's perspective) is that an overwhelming majority of the time (more than 99%, really) the complaint is valid. Makes it harder to work up the righteous indignance the DMCA deserves.

How hard would it be to spoof an IP

[mhesseltine]

Say of the school admin, Dean's office, etc. and send packets on a port commonly used by P2P?

Also, is there a reward for turning someone in on this violation? Sounds like a money maker for some poor geek who happens to be able to fake traffic.

My school is to retarded to implement this

[n1ywb]

At my school, Vermont Tech, the Computer Club's student run server was recently shut off for "file shareing activities".

Our IT department noticed that our machine was originating a very large volume of outgoing traffic. They ran NMAP, and saw

6346/tcp filtered gnutella

and said "Oh, they're running Gnutella." They pulled our plug, without even bothering to try and contact the machine's administrator or the club's advisor first.

This is not a joke, they really did.

It turned out that someone was legitimately downloading a legitimate copy of the non-commercial QNX iso from our legitimate public FTP site.

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

Legal p2p

[moncyb]

Well, there are some p2p systems which do the sort of things you mentioned. Most people don't know about them because off all the hype which says P2P is only for "free" movies and music--much of the hype is spread by the MPAA and RIAA themselves.

Off the top of my head, The Circle had an IRC like chatting system, a group messaging system (kind of like Usenet, kind of not--could distribute blogs with it), and last time I checked, they were working on a system which works with apt-get to distribute Debian packages via The Circle. I'm sure there are other systems like it, but probably not many. Read below for the reason.

The problem with P2P networks is that they are mostly used for piracy. This is not a property of the protocol but of the people who have chosen to use the protocol.

I think the situation consists more of people who have been chased out of using the protocol. Who would want to use (or create) a system if there is significant risk of being sued / attacked because of what others do on it, or because an organization has delcared war on this type of system? Then you are only left with people who want to use it for illegal purposes.

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