Schools to Avoid: University of Florida

Iphtashu Fitz writes "The University of Florida has apparently come up with a technological approach to deal with P2P file sharing on their campus networks. According to this article on wired.com they have developed a program that scans the PCs of students in the UF dorm rooms. The program, dubbed 'Icarus' not only detects P2P applications but viruses, worms, and other trojans. If a P2P application is found then an e-mail is sent to the user, a message is popped up on their screen, and their internet connection is disconnected. First time offenders lose their connection for 30 minutes. The second offense results in a 5 day loss. The third strike results in an indefinite loss of connectivity. An editorial in The Independent Florida Alligator, the student newspaper, called the use of Icarus 'an invasive and annoying system that further deters students from living in dorms (see also another story).'"

Comments

Re:Anti-Intellectual Environment

[josephgrossberg]

In other words, innocent until proven guilty.

You mean it's "guilty until proven innocent" at UF.

Re:Anti-Intellectual Environment

[wo1verin3]

>> In other words, innocent until proven guilty.

You mean guilty until proven innocent? The burden is on the STUDENT to justify what they are researching.

Re:Anti-Intellectual Environment

[big-giant-head]

"In other words, innocent until proven guilty"

I think you mean guilty until proven innocent. I'm really suprised, usually courts throw out these type of rules since they violate equal protection.

Re:Where's the beaf?

[An'Desha Danin]

The university doesn't have any moral claim over your private property, either. Running remote scans on users' computers without their authorization isn't exactly ethical, even if the admin has legal capacity to do so.

Re:Schools to no longer avoid!

[brxndxn]

I personally would rather have a huge horde of bandwidth available for any possible use. People shouldn't blame Kazaa for using too much bandwidth; instead, they should upgrade their networks.

I go to UF. The dorm room connections were never that great. Three years ago, with only Napster on the network, it was damn slow. UF is blaming these file sharers for a slow network when they really oughta be checking their bandwidth availability. I live off campus and use a cable modem - it's about 3x as fast as the UF network.

If UF spent some money to upgrade the bandwidth, then the file sharing wouldn't matter. It's a sad thing to see my college give up on the liberties of the students and surrender to an invisible threat of liability - something Universities were traditionally immune from...

BTW, the entire premise of the Internet is being fucked right now. Corporations will run the net completely. If they had their way, the Internet would have limited download and zero upload. There is no reason to sell uber download with shitty upload unless you're trying to limit the participation of the end user. Perhaps now UF will limit upload speeds of the students too. Hell, we might as well pay a portion of our taxes directly to the RIAA/MPAA and all the other corporations forcing the Internet under their tight control.

So, since your entire school couldn't cope with 2 T1 lines, Kazaa should be banned? How about limit everyone on your gimped network to text file sharing? Eliminate everything but text and maybe you could get your entire school under a 56kbps line. You blame file sharers when your school was too cheap to pay for some real bandwidth.