Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

MIT Releases Subpoenaed Student's Info

Posted by timothy on from the stories-are-at-odds dept.

An anonymous reader submits: "MIT has released the name of the alleged infringer whose information was subpoenaed by the RIAA. The student's position? He was (1) not in the country at the time of the infringement, (2) he does not own a computer, and (3) he is not, and has never been, associated with the username in question (crazyface@KaZaA). MIT initially opposed the subpeona, but the RIAA refiled with the proper court."

3 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Er...Dude... by jtev · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, it's about registering the MAC address to get an IP address with MIT. the KaZaA registration is a totaly different issue. It was the owner of the IP address that was subpeonaed, and he was out of the country.

    --
    That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
  2. MAC address can be changed by narratorDan · · Score: 4, Informative

    The problem with using the MAC address is that it can be changed or covered up, and since this is MIT how many folks do you think now how to change it?

    And according to the article, he was out of town (way out, like Romania) and therefor could not be the person who set up the computer. Since he can prove that he was out of the US I don't think that he will have to make any deals to save his ass.

    NarratorDan

    --
    "If you're not confused by quantum mechanics, you really don't understand it." - Niels Bohr
  3. Re:Twisted by rjw57 · · Score: 4, Informative
    Sounds like the guy in question had unofficially let someone else use his computer, account, etc.

    Not quite. From what I can gather MIT have a system whereby as soon as a un-recognised MAC-address hits the network, the machine is DHCP-d a temporary IP and a all web-traffic is relocated to a registration page.

    On this page, a valid MIT id and password is entered then the temporary IP becomes 'attached' to that MAC address with the MIT id used stored in a DB somewhere.

    Hence just having an IP registered to a particular user is just an indication that that guy/guyess was the first to use the machine, not that its theirs or that they even have an account on it.

    In fact, if all MIT students registered their machines under a common id (e.g. riaasuckmyballs) then there would suddenly seem to be one big pirate there :)

    The system as it stands will probably just match an IP to a person who once used the machine in question.

    --
    Rich