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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.)"
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.
to the first person to forge an email and get someone taken off the network for something they didn't actually do.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
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...
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.
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.
--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