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More on the University of Florida
setzman writes "According to this article, the University of Florida has implemented a software program known as ICARUS (Integrated Control Application for Restricting User Services) to monitor student activities on the campus network. If a user downloads music or videos the system deems to be illegal, they will lose their connection and be punished by being forced to watch industry propaganda, lengthy suspensions of access, or even a written reprimand. Yet the system hasn't resulted in an increase in CD sales? Hmm... Maybe they will figure out another way to improve their failing business model?" We covered this some months ago but the Associated Press is just catching on.
Wow. That is a name I want to base my business on.... We will have to see what the sun does to the wax that holds those wings together....
I wonder if this is one more sign of a doomed music industry. How long until they fall into the sea?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
... even more than the loss of student's privacy, is the fact that other universities have approached these people about buying this ICARUS program.
I'm all for respecting the copyright, but that doesn't extend to censoring my computer. It sounds a little shady to me. What they may end up doing is forcing students to add internet connectivity options to the college-selection process, which is a shame.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Let me tell you first hand that this is one sneaky system. I lived in the dorms over the summer when it was implemented and they didn't even inform the students. All of the sudden my connection was just off. I wasn't downloading ANYTHING, I just had kazaa open in the background (not sharing any files).
I am one of the proud 100 students caught twice mentioned in that article. Now I have my own house off-campus with cable modem service. Hell, it beats using a proxy to destroy ICARUS (it isn't smart enough to monitor packet contents, just destination). Thank God I'm transferring to University of Michigan.
Maybe I'm missing something but I didn't think the University of Florida had a "...failing business model". Maybe they are just doing it so they don't get in trouble? They are a University and it could be argued they are well within their rights to limit their exposure.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
We covered this some months ago but the Associated Press is just catching on.
:-p
To be translated as --
We know you're gonna scream repeat, but we're gonna repeat it anyway.
This notice is to inform you that your access has been suspended to the campus network due to the fact that you have been browsing yro.slashdot.com.
In order to continue your so-called education you must sit with one of our thought process councilors to discuss your perspective on the illegal action of downloaded music.
Please go to the campus library and navigate to www.riaa.com/uflorida to register for your session.
Thank you,
Mr. Charrington
It is the universities internet connection they are providing to students, and is subject to their policies of use. If students want to download illegal content, they have the freedom to attain their own internet connection through some other means.
What's another word for Thesaurus?
-Steve Wright
Does the University of florida sell CDs? Is the drop in CD sales affecting the sources of income for the University of florida? If not, isn't this a stupid comment? If the RIAA were blackmailing the university into implementing this then I would agree that this is a rights violation, but get real: the University of Florida is perfectly well entitled to take steps to ensure it's network isn't used for illegal purposes, not to mention monitoring the use of it's resources. Yes, downloading copyrighted material is illegal, whether you think this is right or wrong. If you don't like this, go to a different university, or get a private net connection.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Dupe articles are somehow worse when the editors know they're dupes and post them anyway.
It would be interesting to see if sales of CDR and DVDRs went up.
Also, what is to stop an informal, peer to peer wireless service starting up?
All the authorities probably want is to not be liable to the RIAA. They don't care whether you download songs or not, they just don't want the RIAA knocking at their door. They are also picking up the tab for all that bandwidth as well.
They probably realise that their students will get round it anyway, or if they don't, it doesn't say much for the ingenuity of UF students.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
A question ..
Is there any first-hand accounts on how this system works?
For example, how it moniter the traffic? The wired article seems to imply that it scans the students' computers which I am not sure I would be too pleased about if it were mine. Also, on what basis does it say that the file being shared is questionable? For example, if I had a file called Metallica.mp3 which does not contain Metallica-copyrighted material, is that deemed ``questionable''? Or perhaps, what if I decided to share legitimate material on Kazaa, such as Linux ISOs? Would I get booked if I did that?
What are the procedures for getting booked? What if I was wrongly accused of downloading or uploading ``questionable'' material?
Thanks.
The only people profiting from the RIAA Shenanigans seems to be software companies that are designing anit copyright infringement technologies.
I only download stuff I would have never bought in the first place, or stuff I Can't buy because it hasn't had a UK release. Not allowingme to download these files doesn't make me buy the CD's or DVD's I just find something else to do.
This is not "censorship", nor is it an "invasion of privacy", nor is it some nefarious RIAA plot.* The University of Florida has the right to set terms of use for its network hardware and bandwidth, and if it decides that it doesn't want said hardware and bandwidth to be used for an activity whose moral status is debatable but whose legal status is quite clear, well, that's none of our business, is it?
So quit whining already.
* I would like to see if UF received any major contributions from the RIAA or one of its members, though -- follow the money and all that.
I might not agree with what the university is doing, but in this case the university can differentiate between the private property (the computer) and the public property (the bandwidth). Note I didn't say I agree with them but at least they are making this separation to the students.
However, one thing I think the University is doing that they need to be VERY CONCERNED with for themselves (and not the students) is that they are now EDITORIALIZING. In other words, they are now saying they have looked at the content and this makes them RESPONSIBLE FOR IT. As soon as you do this, you are legally in a much worse position than you were before.
A bookstore that claims that it has reviewed the titles on its shelves is in a worse position than one that hasn't. It cannot now claim that it didn't know that there was lewd material in one of its books.
This is dangerous because once the law considers it the norm for a university to monitor its bandwidth usage (and not just the amount of bandwidth but the content), they are now open to litigation much more easily. In the end, it is possible that universities might just have to forego much of their Internet access to protect themselves legally. A lose-lose situation for everyone.
Sunny
Be my Friend
You may recall Icarus as the son of Daedalus. Daedalus was an early technological innovator, who developed wings to allow himself and his son to escape the prison they were confined in by King Minos. Minos was angry that Daedalus had given a citizen the key to the maze that Minos had required Daedalus to build for Minos' benefit. Unfortunately, Icarus tried to exploit his father's wing technology incautiously, thus bringing destruction on himself and grief and guilt to his father.
Not that there's a modern metaphor there anywhere...okay, maybe. Key:
- Daedalus = the
/. crowd
- Icarus = the general computer-using public
- wings = peer-to-peer networking
- prison = DMCA
- King Minos = RIAA/MPAA etc.
- key = DeCSS etc.
- maze = copy prevention
- incautiously = without adequate anonymity
- destruction = massive lawsuits, etc.
But you knew this...I suspect that this has very little to do with wanting to keep illegal content off the network, and almost everything to do with not wanting to deal with the administrative load of DMCA takedown notices. Network admins for a large university have much better things to do with their time than file/track/answer notifications w/r/t music that their students are sharing on well-known-and-trackable p2p networks.
The goal is noble, it's just not the one that the RIAA would like to trumpet.
and we didn't even have 'net access in the dorms (to be fair, it was before the 'net existed, but still...) we had to run our programs off the VAX in the library.
Hmph... spoiled young'uns.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Forgetting something important: what's the sun? What is that which melts the wings of Icarus? What pervasive, omnipresent force that can both kill and bring life caused the death of Icarus? I think that it is a worldview brought about by the internet: the world itself as information. The reprecussions of this can bring about the apogee of humanity, and its end, albeit indirectly.
#define DRM chmod 000
I'm not even sure where to begin but I was caught by the system. The first time around it was simply a matter of them explaining why. They set the ground rules when I spoke with them, I learned well during a 20 minute conversation with the system network admin.
:( The system got me again.
I strayed off the path a bit just recently and fired up kazaa to see if i could find some music they were playing on the university radio station. I wasn't strong enough to stay away from the copyrighted materials
I've been without inet access for a few months now, sucks but I'm getting better now. I dont think about ripping off artists much anymore and the riaa video was actually quite informative (better than my psychology classes at least.) If I can keep this up for a few more months I'll be set, I'll hopefully never consider downloading music that I dont own... Downloading music aint right and thats the truth.
...downloading copyrighted material is perfectly legal if you have permission to do so.
as its only the students complaining that they cannot use kazaa etc, bravo to the UNI for implementing a system that actually works maybe some honest research with all that spare bandwidth can now be performed
of course if the students want full, filter free connections they wont mind being an adult and paying the full price for an OC3 to their residence just like any citizen in a community would.
Assuming that the UF might get sued by the Record Mafia for not preventing illegal activities it seems consequent and reasonable to block P2P transfer within the university net. Why did they install a surveillance system instead? Are they up to something else?
But I really loved this part:
Hmm, aversion therapy. That's nice. Are there any details about hooks holding the eye lids and electrodes attached to the testicles?Does the University of florida sell CDs? Is the drop in CD sales affecting the sources of income for the University of florida? If not, isn't this a stupid comment?
Not realy. A system like this costs money, both to implement and run. And unless school officials are looking for ways to get fired, they have a realy good excuse for those expenses (read: "RIAA is behind this")
RIAA once had a "Study" pointing to a relationshit between online music sharing and declined CD sales around universities.
Therefore, it would bo logical to assume that CD sales would go up after a dragonian system like this was implemented, and surprising if it didn't.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
I have CAPITAL LETTERS and I am NOT AFRAID to USE THEM.
Seriously though. The university isn't taking responsibility for the content being distributed or downloaded: it's just blocking all uses of peer-to-peer applications, even those which aren't illegal; what it's saying, in effect, is that using the school's bandwidth for filesharing applications is no longer permitted. That, of course, raises a different set of questions: what about the student musician or filmmaker who wants to distribute his work to an audience larger than that which he can find on campus, but lacks the means -- or the desire -- to go through normal channels? (Or what about the distribution of uncopyrighted works in general, really -- peer-to-peer does have legally and morally legitimate uses. The editorial mentions this.)
Caedite eos! Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.
Even more interesting: Icarus is the child of Daedalus (a technological wizard) and Naucrate (a government whore)!
:)
But that's okay, since there's no technological wizardry or governmental whoring involved in this one, right?
I don't think the other students should have to foot the bill for those who want to use huge amounts of bandwidth. Those who want to swap can get their own, private internet connection.
When a private ISP does this, I will care.
Didn't NPR run an article on this? But NPR's article stated that using P2P AT ALL will trigger the warning.
Thats got me worried.
P2P CAN Be used as a legimate software distribution medium. i.e FreeBSD and some other free software tend to get a lot of hits on my upload queue.
So, if users were getting Linux ISO's over p2p in the university/corporate network, and this software triggers false warnings, who knows what will happen.
and there i was thinking that a university was for LEARNING not goofing off downloading as much illegal mp3's and warez as you can cram down their connection
You clearly havn't been to a university recently.
...and all this does is piss me, and everyone else, off. I can't even use bittorrent. There's also an OpenNAP-based server for trading live music I like to use, but cannot. Everyone knows that sysadmins have God complexes... ICARUS is the result of one. There was quite a fuss the year before over P2P apps taking up more bandwidth than was thought appropriate. It's a well written program, but I don't agree with its purpose. I don't like being assumed guilty, and not even given a chance to prove my innocence.
Oh well, I just take my laptop over to a friend's apartment and download all I want. Less of my dollars are going to UF next year; I'm moving out.
...because 12 year old children get sued for thousands of dollars and students "will lose their connection and be punished by being forced to watch industry propaganda, lengthy suspensions of access, or even a written reprimand.".
Sounds fair to me
Well if this dosen't illustrate the need for a fully encrypted p2p network I don't know what does. Can you say... tunnel it all through SSL? IRC has been doing this for ages...
AEnertia
Witty, tag line goes here
I'll give you the run-down.
It monitors your connection to the kazaa network. It's nothing too fancy. If you connect, you get screwed. They run the check like every 30 minutes or something. Once detected your internet is immidiately shut off with no notice. A flier will be sent to your dorm finally informing you of what happened. The first time I had to go see the head RA of my dorm complex who was also clueless on the outage. He contacted the network people who let me know that it was the new ICARUS system and that I had to go to a webpage to reactivate my account. Upon visitning the site you are told exactly what happened, and the first time I think I got my net cut off for only 30 minutes.
The second time wasn't so pretty. Same routine (although this time I KNOW i wasnt even downloading anything or sharing, just connected to kazaa... what's the crime in that?) but different sentence. My net was cut off for 48 or 72 hours (cant remember which), and I had a judicial violation. If I violated again, I would have perm. account suspension and I would have to go before a review board.
So basically, if you are on the UF network kazaa is blocked for all intensive purposes. I don't know why they don't just BLOCK kazaa instead of screwing students over in this manner. However, I'm a student, not a suit, so what do I know, right?
program = the sun - censorship & annoyance for students ;0)
program = Daedalus - Benevolent Admins trying to prevent destruction
You know the admins love to think of themselves as gods
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
...as in "Free.... erm.... oh shit, they've got our beer AND our liberty. We're screwed!"
I never know how to think about this sort of stuff anymore. On one hand they are breaking the law (no matter how unjustified it may seem) and it is the Universities network. I seem to remember many Uni's whining about how much bandwidth they were having to provide then finding out 80% of it was used to download music, pr0n and warez.
I mean, if you walk into a shop and steal CDs... we all know what will happen.
On the other hand, this whole music model with the RIAA (and similar organisations outside the US) sucking us dry has got to die.
So, it the downloading of music a form of protest or free speech, or is it simply breaking the laws of the land?
(Ok, is it the AP Journalist who has no idea what copyright means and has paraphrased Green, or Green himself?)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
ICARUS.... i'm sure that's the name of some villain's software off some bond movie or something similar...
Hmm... Maybe they will figure out another way to improve their failing business model?
I guarantee you, both the music and education industries do NOT having a failing busines model. Just look on TV, listen to the radio, read a newspaper or magazine, go to a movie, go to work, or just live in the Western Hemisphere, and you'll see this is true.
People only have so much money, particularly students. Ten albums will rake up a bill of $150. Many, such as myself, are boycotting the industry. They couldn't've sustained their previous momentum forever, and pissing a lot of people off didn't help.
As for the morality of copying music, I'd rather copy the music I want than send money into a legal fund that's attacking children and the elderly.
The RIAA's inflated numbers have to be re-interpretted as well. iTunes hurts CD sales, as does tuition and rent. A song copied is not a song not bought, many people steal ten or a hundred times the music they would've bought, and many continue to buy CD's.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
It's about bandwidth, which p2p systems eat like Americans sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner.
Best Slashdot Co
how about good ol' newsgroups? sounds like ICA-R-US works only on P2P file sharing. or does it detect alt.binaries.****s? I doubt it does.
:p
you know, sometimes it's a good idea to step backwards, live in the old style, and survive well in this world controlled by a few in power. I'm talking about "school," of course.
This makes me want to transfer there and share tons of RedHat ISOs and OpenOffice.org install files.
How do they know it's illegal or not? Isn't it legal to download a song if you have a hard copy of it? I mean, if I have such and such song, can't get it onto my computer due to a lack of a CD drive, couldn't I legally download it off the Net?
I think the real problem is people serving music, whether done legally or not. Here's the solution. ISPs adopt a policy severely limiting upload speed. Download speed should be big, but upload speed should be rather small. Upload speeds are only needed for serving, not surfing. Simple as that, is it not?
You sort of have to hope that everything after "Yet" was a joke, but it probably wasn't.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
With all benefits of ICARUS aside, can't it be circumvented with something like Waste?
That's more or less what my university did. First, they outright blocked it. Then, someone clued in OIT about some bandwidth-throttling hardware. Now, during the day, P2P gets the dregs of bandwidth left over from normal usage, and everyone is mostly happy. This ICARUS program (from reading the comments) appears to be a roundabout way of blocking indiscriminately, except with more overhead. Go figure.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
At my school, Cornell University, they simply charge you for any bandwidth you use over 2GB/month. (At about $3/GB). Basically, you can do what you want on the net, but if you're a heavy downloader, you're going to pay to support that habit. (There have been a few people shut down, but those were the idiots downloading several feature-length movies, etc. a day, and they were shut down for using WAY too much of their dorm's available bandwidth).
And yes, there is an acceptable use policy, but as I use iTMS, that doesn't really affect me.
Hmmm, looks like ICARUS isn't up on Kazaa yet... damn.
Just like a certain college near me requires students attending to live in dorms the first couple of semesters and bans all sex, public display of affection, dancing between different sex people, and non-christian music with the punishment of suspension and expulsion, they will lose buisness. Of course, they won't tell you about what they're doing. Oh no, they'll give you the rulebook after you sign up and have given them your money, not before.
This one reeks of a scam. Stay away from the university of florida. I surely am not going to live in dorms without free, unbiased, uncensored internet access. Throttle my access if you must, but tell me what I'm getting into. If they decided to implement this bullshit, I'd go ahead and get some friends who feel the same way and tell the staff "either take it of, or we won't be here next semester".
This also brings up a censorship part. Remember in the 1970's when govermental studies bodies found that "problem" of liberal people came mostly from campuses and poor areas? I'd bet they'd love to cut off students from all liberal views on the internet.
Do I also need to note that the only reason that college near me has stayed open is because some rich people and the local goverment breath funding into it year after year?
Candy-Coated Knowledge
If arttendance was down 20 percent next semester I bet there would be a change in attitude.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
"I don't know why they don't just BLOCK kazaa instead of screwing students over in this manner."
Ensuring that most people will be criminals by enacting laws that the majority will break (and allowing them to break those laws), and then monitoring such activities gives you a nice power leverage.
That way if anyone becomes uncomfortable for one reason or another (entirely unrelated to the issue), you can always 'get' them with the laws they did break.
The questions were retorical. No need to answer them. The intended use of the news stories and photos on Yahoo, Slashdot, avertisers are understood. Copying them and redistributing them as your own would be a problem.
Not all downloading of copyrighted content is wrong. Archiving it and re-playing it later as your own collection could be outside of the intent of the copyright holder. This is the issue the RIAA has with downloaders. Listen to it when it's played on the radio, but don't dare make a personal copy off the internet without paying for the right.
The truth shall set you free!
"Yet the system hasn't resulted in an increase in CD sales?"
How is this a surprise? Most college students don't have much money to spare, Internet restrictions or not.
Who doesn't like free music?
A manic-depressive power-hungry restriction bot, named ICARUS on top of it. Sounds a lot like "Deus Ex" to me.
Where's the DAEDALUS then, and how soon are we going to witness the coming of HELIOS?
---
___
On Slashdot, Russians comment on YOU!
If a user downloads music or videos the system deems to be illegal, they will lose their connection and be punished by being forced to watch industry propaganda, lengthy suspensions of access, or even a written reprimand.
Reminds me of "A Clockwork Orange"...
The other little things such as lengthy suspensions of access and words on paper saying bad student will only encourage alternate means being found to accomplish what they want. In true university fashion they are encouraging research!
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
Let's not forget "When it Matters". Too much of today's published news is either (1) filler that seeks only to improve readership rather than to inform or (2) commentary meant to spice it up when it actually only inserts bias into a story in order to remove or disguise the facts. (Reminder: thoughtful commentary that reeks of research is fine; overly flamboyant commentary is too stylish for a "just the facts ma'am" approach, which is what I want from the news report.)
This is why my morning Internet routine involves checking my (e)mail, Slashdot, and Google News. After that, I hit the daily grind and come back some ten hours later to make the same rounds. Only then might I comment on something on my web log, and there hasn't been much time for that this fall.
just wait till you can stream alcohol though p2p networks.
the simple solution to this problem: get a few roommates (read: fellow geeks), rent a big enough house, get 1 cable modem for each person, grab a linux box, a load of NICs and load balancing/traffic shaping software and pipe the P2P stuff through one modem, game ports through another and the HTTP/FTP/POP3/etc stuff through the third, and have one box that runs the kazaa/BT client, communal file sharing if you will, just set it and forget it until it's done. Pooling existing music/video collections also works wonders, if you're stuck in a dorm, 802.11G is your friend, grab an few AP's and cards and setup a little encrypted sharing net within the dorm complex, with a few bucks, one could send a low bandwidth (5Mb/s) link over a few miles to someone off campus who has bandwidth to burn :)
Logistical Chaos Officer http://www.slagg.org - LAN Gaming in Sarasota FL,USA
From what I'm reading it seems that if you simply connect to Kazzaa you get kicked, doesn't even bother checking what you're doing. I can't wait untill they start doing this for BitTorrent. Because we all know that anything that can be used for something illegal has no possible legal use
Why not just setup traffic shaping.
At the school that I went to, when Napter and then Kazaa became a problem (i.e. was eating up too much of the colleges upstream/downstream bandwidth), the network admins just applied some traffic shaping to it. They gave 4500 students 30kbps of bandwidth. That stopped 99% of the downloading.
These sorts of content filtering seem silly, as all it will do is speed up the transition to encrypted, hard to trace solutions.
Yet the system hasn't resulted in an increase in CD sales?
More likely to have resulted in an increase in blank CD sales.
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
I work for a college IT Dept. Pretty much most of our concern isn't what they are downloading as much as how much bandwidth it's taking up. We ended up buying a Packet Shaper to limit P2P traffic to practially nothing, and it's not just because of copyright issues, it's because it was sucking 75% of the Internet bandwidth at any one point in time to the point that Internet speed was around 3KB/s.
Bandwidth isn't cheap. It was either Block the P2P Traffic or Double the Technology fee. so we chose to block it.
The other thing is that ICARUS also has been shown to detect msblast and drop the connection before in infects half the campus. Campuses want something like this BADLY. They want to have a system that automaticially can disrupt a connection if unauthorized traffic is detected, whether it's Kazza, a Virus, or whatever.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
The university I'm at has a simple policy to avoid running out of bandwidth: they monitor bandwidth use per IP address (or per physical network socket, I'm not sure which way they run it). If you consistently use too much (where "too much" roughly means "enough to inconvenience everyone else"), they tell you to stop. In theory, if you keep using too much, they disconnect you, but in practice most people get the hint after the first warning or two. Formally, we aren't told what the limit is; informally, I've heard the computing service start taking an interest once you break 1GB/day on a regular basis.
As a matter of policy, they don't sniff network traffic (they'd rather not be responsible for it).
They do block a couple of ports, but only the ones you really don't want to use over the Internet (NetBIOS) and a couple they need to block for policy reasons (SMTP to the outside world is blocked, to make sure that if we spam, it goes through the central mail relay, so they can tell who was responsible; it's a little annoying, since I can use my web host as an authenticated relay from any network except university, but I can live with it).
I think it's even possible to convince them to unblock those ports for your IP, if you can come up with a good enough reason, although I've never tried.
It's a good policy IMO; you can't transfer huge amounts of data all the time, but you can have very impressive bandwidth for a short time (I've downloaded Linux ISOs from another college at about 40MBit/sec!) and pretty much any network protocol is allowed (good for computer science students and like-minded people).
Don't click the parent's link! It's not cool.
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
I don't see what's so hard about this. One attends a university to, I assume, learn -- not to use filesharing services. It's quite simple, really: if you don't like the restrictions that a university places on your (illegal, mind you) use of its bandwidth, then don't attend that fucking university.
but not pay for it...
You may not like the **AA's, but I don't see why, unless you are a fan of the artists they represent, in which case they are correct. If you do not listen to music whose owners are represented by the RIAA, then you are not a target of their persecution. Otherwise, you are a cheap, whinning git who likes Britney Spears but can't bring themselves to admit it. let alone support the 'artists'(a loose term) who provide you your listening enjoyment...blech...
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
Can anyone report how many dollars in bandwidth per month it is costing students/states simply because of Kazaa? Most places keep Mb logs of how much traffic flows over each popular service. I'm guessing at a large university, it is definitely into upper 6 or lower 7 figures for the whole year. That's a dozen senior faculty members' salaries for the year.
"I'm a student, not a suit, so what do I know, right?"
/protest/letter writing campaign/mail local newspapers/have a student body hearing/put up posters/get alumni involved.
Exactly, you (or your parents) are a "tuition" paying student. You are at the University of Florida, but could easily go somewhere else. If you disaprove of something, you can always do something about it.
Sig it.
You're in a dorm with hundreds of other students, all with access to CD burners. Blank CDs cost $0.20. Have everybody chip in $0.25 for one copy of each CD you all want, then burn copies for everybody. Hey, if you're going to be treated like criminals, might as well do it right -- in this case it greatly lessens your chances of getting caught!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
this is one of the key methods of modern population control (not as in birth control, as in getting the population to behave how you want.) (it may be ancient as well, i am not commenting on that.)
it also helps if you can make violation of these laws felonies os that you can convict masses of people (possible heavy penalties) then let them off easy (they will then be happy they got off easy) and then thay can never vote again and so can not vote someone in who promises to get rid of the law they do not agree with.
anyone want to add to the list of key methods of modern population control.
Sorry to flog the dead mammal, but people need to remember:
Copyright infringement is not theft.
They are two legally distinct concepts, and conflating them is RIAA propaganda.
-j
I forget what 8 was for.
Why don't they hire detectives to tail the students to the local library? I hear you can check out CDs there and listen to the for FREE! Of course, the collection there leans more to classical than to Britney Spears...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
That's why my friends at FSU always chanted...
To be
a Florida Gator
must suck.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
I take it then, that they had to develop this expensive software solution because they couldn't figure out how to simply add rules to their firewall to block outgoing Kazaa connections?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
so thier enrollment is going to fall, it is the beginning of the schools downfall. students should avoid this school like the plauge. send a message that if you support the riaa you, will go out of business..... we have to vote with our pocketbook, since all out goverment has been bought by the riaa. sad it has to be a school.
burn it to the ground!
"which claims online song-swapping is largely responsible for a 31 percent drop in CD sales in the past three years"
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that CD prices still range from $15-18/per and the internet is $30/month (for me). If the price of CD's were more reasonable, I would buy them.
> The university isn't taking responsibility for the content being distributed or downloaded:
The University has decided that a specific type of communication is forbidden, but based on what?
It is that "what" that comes the editorializing. Clearly the University has made themselves aware of a legal issue, analysed it, and acted to prevent it. Why would they not now be obligated to thwart all similar problems, such as an http downloads of an infringing file?
You are under NO obligation to patrol the streets, but if you DO witness a crime you are obligated to report it. The University has made the choice to patrol. They put themselves in the positon of "cop", as they are not simply patroling a commons but actually OWN and CONTROL the facility, so they CAN now be sued by anyone who is similarly harmed.
They almost surely have broken their ISP at arms length protections under the DMCA for this. Not that the US Legal system will give on rat's arse - law only applies to the surfs. Call it what you will, but they are clearly "involved" in defining the selection of content available over their network.
Look, like it or not, it IS illegal to swap songs over the Internet. The RIAA alone has ALL the rights it needs to pursue the "villans". Why does everyone in the middle feel the need to get themselves all involved? Let the RIAA enforce it's copyrights. Let them find infringers and sue them. It's their property, they have the resources, they have recourse under the law, and it is their "business model" that they're protecting.
Why would a University, or any ISP, actively put themselves between a criminal and the law?
Let the RIAA and the Law handle it.
This reminds me of The Clockwork Orange. It would not surprise me if the RIAA uses similar tactics.
The presentation just tells you a bit about copyright law and the University policy on intellectual property. It's about half a page, and summarizes what a person would normally hear during a judicial meeting.
UF already runs a wireless service on campus, so I don't see any informal peer to peer starting up. Don't forget anyone capable of setting up such a system probably already lives off campus, and is download of a regular ISP. (I know I am) Side note: Icarus only effects those who live in the dorms, so I don't think there is any realistic way of seeing if blank media sales went up due dorm students downloading, as the trend of the area is for everyone to run out to Best Buy and pick up a pack of CD-R's like it was a gallon of milk.
Why don't they just block Kazaa? Seems easier than this system, and less Gestapo-style. Won't catch me going to a school that's out to get its own students.
Have students appealed through the campus judicial process?
Moreover, since the system seems to click based on connecting to Kazaa (not illegal) instead of copyright infringement (illegal) you probably have a case in a real court.
UFlorida is a state school, not a private school (little things like the Constitution apply). Get yourself a lawyer and sue. You are being found guilty and punished without due process.
For any of you /.'ers that would actually like to learn the truth ICARUS, go directly from the source.
Division of Housing Network Services:
http://www.dhnet.ufl.edu/dhnet.php
DHnet Discussion forums:
http://www.dhnet.ufl.edu/forums/index.php
--
mliesenf
DHnet resident
DHnet forum moderator
When you are shopping for residence at UF, they make you very aware of the internet policies. Living with a crippled connection is one of the drawback of living on campus. If you want to run Kazaa, move off campus to one of the billion cheap apartments, and sign up to any of the handful of ISP's that are not affiliated with the University. You are not captive by any means.
A wireless mesh alternate network should do the trick. Route around the damage so to speak.
And what about encrypted p2p?
One supposes that then they would ban any
encrypted transmissions as probably containing
contraband data...
Yet the system hasn't resulted in an increase in CD sales? Hmm... Maybe they will figure out another way to improve their failing business model?
Has the thought even occurred to the author of this story that maybe the University wants to stop the students using expensive college facilities for criminal activity?
The pro-piracy\anti-RIAA(what's the difference) brigade around here remind me of those anti-war protesters. They'll moan and moan about infringement of rights etc but they won't offer an alternative solution.
I invite the poster to suggest other means of dissuading students from getting as much stuff as possible for free with the minimum of effort. As a former student and friend of lots of other students I know that's pretty next to impossible unless you threaten them with severe disciplinary action.
P.S. Every time I post here speaking out against pirates (and other thieving scum) I get moderated down as a troll? Care to listen to what I have to say this time?
Just like a certain college near me requires students attending to live in dorms the first couple of semesters and bans all sex, public display of affection, dancing between different sex people, and non-christian music
So what you're saying is, you live near a Christian college that encourages homosexual dancing?
Do people ever once *think* about how conflicting their rules and morals get once they try to restrict behaviour to this extent, or are they just hoping no one will catch on?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I noticed that too... this system seems closer to the role of the Sun in the Icarus story. Icarus' high-tech daddy built him some powerful wings (P2P tools?) that let him fly... but young foolish Icarus got cocky with his new power and flaunted it, challenging the "Gods" -- he flew too high, and got smoked by the Sun. Wings disintegrating, he plummeted from the sky into the unforgiving sea (of lawsuits?). Sploosh.
I wonder what kind of hardware they run the thing on? I'd laugh if were SUN.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
I go to Florida State University and they have blocked napster and other P2P for years. This might be alittle off topic but why do the police allow people with open containers (against florida law) to walk blatently in front of police on game day? Maybe if the traded football files they would allow and endorse it. Basically it is okay to break the rules as long as it pertains to football.
If I understand this correctly...
- students may NOT opt out of paying for internet connectivity, regardless of their desire to use or not
- merely connecting to a Kazaa node activates the enforcement action (i.e., no downloading of illegal content is required)
- previously collected internet connectivity fees are NOT refunded on a pro-rated basis, for services that will never be delivered
- RIAA propaganda is force-fed to those whom this *ahem*... system has determined as violaters (are they bound to a comfy chair, with eyes propped wide open also?)
Makes you wonder if there are any lawyers actually practicing in Florida. I don't support illegal content downloading in general, but this UF solution is a huge load of crap, atop a heaping stinkpile of entrapment. Why the fsck don't they simply block Kazaa at the firewall? Doesn't their Kung Fu Master of Network Coordination (Rob Bird) understand how to configure a firewall? Guess not.
Who's really doing the stealing and profiteering here folks? Preying on a captive audience of ignorant youth who are not-so-worldly in a legal and business sense, shouldn't result in mass adulation and butt kisses? Where's the outrage???
These are the kinds of spineless wimps who (I pray) are whining passengers on that busload of RIAA scum, that fateful day when the lynch mob corners them on a cul de sac.
Ok... a little over the top perhaps. But I truly am praying for that day, when some smart and courageous kid figures out that they too, can have their very own ass-reaming lawyer.
who has played Deus Ex 1...
...or maybe it's uncool to reference videogames on a yro thread. i should try and figure this out.
ICARUS is, in the game, an advanced version of the Echelon program. interesting how life follows art.
Correct me if i am wrong but there is an exception in copyright law for educational use esp if no profit is involved...for example i can use footage from the latest blockbuster to point out physics flaws....i can use the latest pop hit to show how music can induce siezures.... as far as i know all these are legal uses of copyrighted material..... this university's policy seems to ignore this fact (among others)
the RIAA is based out of CA, adn CA business has a very nasty philosophy when it comes to business. This philosophy is one if "fix the blame" before and sometime instead of "fix the problem." In this case theere is a problem of lower CD sales. So the RIAA will try and fix the blame away from them so they will not be fired. When they shoudl be fixing the problem the created the low CD sales in the first place. Now i know some of you think that file sharing is the problem, but unfortunately it is not as simple as that. The problem in this case, as it is most cases is a combination of several factors, adn until the RIAA can evolve enough to be able to comprehend holistic probelm solving they will continue to be the narrow, one tracked minded children they are.
Hmm... Maybe they will figure out another way to improve their failing business model?
A few weeks ago, we held a forum on "Net Piracy" here at my school of Texas A&M. It wasn't really a forum, with the connotation of public discussion, but more of a presentation by the speakers. Attending were a local professor of communications, an author of a book on the subject, an MPAA vice president, and US Representative John Carter. They gave some very good speeches and then answered some presubmitted questions.
I was a pretty frustrated that I was not going to get a chance to ask a question. I had some very good ones! Then someone from the audience said something about originality, interrupting one of the speakers. The moderator asked him to clarify, and this guy in the audience launched into a diatribe about how formulaic are all the current movies and music, and how people would be more willing to pay money for it if it was more original.
Jesus Fucking Christ.
There were a lot of things that needed to be said at that forum. The US Representative was using "steal" and "pirate" as if they meant the same thing as "download" and "share." This guy is making our country's laws based on a powerful, industry-sponsored misconception. Why the hell would someone bring up this originality bullshit? That's something you complain about with your buddies. It's not something you use as justification for copyright violations before a member of the United States House of Representatives. Way to give us all a bad name, idiot.
This "failing business model" crap is just one more example of the same problem. You can sit around with your friends (or on Slashdot, if that is your only friend) and talk about how weak RIAA's and MPAA's business model is, but you don't use that as justification for breaking it.
I think the ideal would look a lot like iTunes, with all music, movies, and TV shows available for download at a low price. That would be great for everyone. The people who produce it get paid, the people who want it get it whenever they want. Guess what? That business model has a lot of potential to fail. People will download the stuff, crack its encryption, and share it. There's nothing wrong with the business model, it's the assholes you see all around you that don't follow the rules.
I resent the whining camera prop commercial they play before movies as much as the next guy, and Britney Spears spews nothing but bullshit, but seriously, they really do need to get paid. Actors get paid too much (by my standards), and music labels don't compensate musicians well, but they REALLY DO NEED TO GET PAID. There's no justification here for downloading music and movies you should be paying for. If you don't want to buy it, you don't get it. Life goes on.
We don't have many, if any, proper firewalls here at UA for political reasons. Maintaining and open network and all that.
The network nazis from our central computing office use the snmp monitoring on our switches to keep track of traffic. if somone crosses a threshold, BANG, their port is cut off until the "problem," be it Kazaa or pwnage, is fixed.
Additionally, colleges get away with various restrictions because they have a captive market (college students, fresh out of high school and quite often all-too-comfortable being treated without full adult dignity), but remember that colleges are ISPs. The students are not receiving free connections tied in big red bows, but rather are indeed paying for them, and no private ISP in the country would get away with these kinds of restrictions. Remember that students use connections for personal as well as education uses, and are not so simply defined-- Simply being a .edu ISP does not mean that the lame "they're using our network, it's our rules" defense is justifies invasive monitoring.
Again, compare to if a consumer ISP said that in defense of an ICARUS-like system. They'd lose half their subscribers in a month. The reason for this is simple: nobody should be forced to agree to private terms which will remove rights that are constitutionally protected in a public life, and such terms should indeed very very seldom be included in any contract. This applies to college ISP agreements just as it does to normal ISP agreements.
Stop purchasing their products.
Stop downloading their products.
Stop desiring their products.
HATE their products.
And tell all of your friends and their friends to do the same and the RIAA will die a horrible death as the new republic of underground and free as in speech music will rise from the ashes.
Do they prop open their eyelids and clamp their heads in place? Do they dispense eyedrops to prevent the resultant problems? Do they force them to lick the guard's boots?
I'm getting tired of the "Maybe they will figure out another way to improve their failing business model?" line.
The school is a business, and they're trying to protect their liability, not sell records.
If they had a special smoke detector in the dorms that alerted them to students smoking pot, busting those students wouldn't be for the purpose of improving their failing alcohol selling model.
Do the record companies overcharge for their product? Probably. However, last time I checked, the US is a capitalist republic, and there's nothing wrong with making a profit.
If you really think filesharing is okay, please, please put some skin in the game and go steal a Mercedes because you think Daimler-Benz overcharges.
OK, just impersonate my fellow class mates and trash their newtork access. Oh look, the network closit shares a plenum with the soda machine room... :D
ICARUS IS NOT ABOUT P2P! When will you people get this through your heads? It's about managing an enterprise class network with over 6000 nodes. ICARUS has also been used to help track down and identify hosts infected with things like Welchia so users can be contacted and cleaned. Do you even have a clue what HALF of those nodes using Kazaa on a 10 or 100Mbps LAN does to network performance? P2P programs beat hell out of a network and in some cases actually deny service to other users, which is another violation of the Acceptable Use Policy which students agreed to beforehand. I know this firsthand. I've seen it occur. Find a P2P program that's polite to a network and provides encryption and anonymity to users and maybe you'll see the RIAA go bye bye.
P2P just happens to be the thing that's pissing off students who want their free copyrighted mp3s. If students want mp3s, they can pay for them. iTunes' service is allowed. So are various other pay services. The vast majority of P2P is used for the illicit download of copyrighted music and movies, but that's not the point. If you're getting Linux ISOs from P2P, you're stupid -- not only because it's a security risk, but also because we have an Internet2 connection at UF as well as a local FTP mirror of a few Linux distros (Mandrake, Knoppix, Knoppix-STD to name the ones I remember off the top of my head), and even FreeBSD IIRC. There are alternatives to Kazaa for your digital media.
Under the DMCA, the University of Florida, as an ISP, is responsible for its users' activities. Yes, that's stupid, but that is the law, and UF isn't fond of testing out shaky legal ground by opposing the RIAA and its filing of dozens of lawsuits if the University were to fail to do anything about students using P2P. It's either we restrict users for a few minutes and say "hey, don't do that" or we turn their names over to the RIAA. Because of the DMCA, those are the only choices we are left with. Which would you rather have?
Rename all your warez, movies and mp3s to stuff such as "Submarine_engine_distortion.mp3", "The_development_of_a_maggot.avi" and "statistic_calculator.exe"
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
"Maybe they will figure out another way to improve their failing business model?"
If you think selling music is a failing business model, you are a complete moron.
"Last spring, the pressure from record companies hit critical mass at the University of Florida. The school was getting about 40 notices a month asking it to disconnect students for illegal downloading. About 1,000 cases involving violations of copyright rules were clogging the school's judicial system. An estimated 40 percent of dorm residents were downloading illegally."
Some important facts from the article completely ignored by poster, who was too busy with his own anti recording industry agenda to bother mentioning.
Vote for Pedro
How the hell do you get access to the Internet that is not subject to some random persons "Terms of Use"? Serious? I would love to have pure raw access to the Internet. How do I get it? How do I remove the people monitoring and restricting my access?
I can't believe there isn't a score 5 comment on the fact that this isn't about "omg stopping student rights to use kazaa" it's about fair use == bandwidth. Hosting movies and music collections from a dorm room SHOULD get you slapped.
There's lots of great research on the web, even with pretty pictures, about the percentages of campus bandwitdth (that you and I, the law abiding tax payer, cover) that goes to file swapping.
Now of course you and I don't mind people using kazaa to share Debian iso's, and using our tax money to pay for that bandwidth at state universities. But lets face it, I go to a Florida school, and I'll be damned if my student loans are funding someone elses 'Limp Biscuit' collection. It is excess that's driven the schools to this point. Back in 1996 it was like kids in the candy store - huge pipes, no saturation, people playing Quake at 15 pings, dudes running 0-day sites out of their dorms - but face it, that snowballed for years and has come to this. It used to be there were 1 or 2 wholesale pirates/traders on the campus network, but the rise of p2p has made practically everyone a trader. Resnets just can't keep up with that. They can either ask nicely (AUP), or they can start clamping down.
(If you dorm kids keep screwing it up the resnets will get shut off: sending you all back to the over-crowded labs.)
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
"Maybe they will figure out another way to improve their failing business model?"
UF has a failing business model? Please, the admins are simply checking people who think college life means leaving your box plugged in with a download queue while you go to class. You know that's how it's gotten on campuses with fat connections. Back to the point: the RIAA is the one who has to reinvent their business model. You might not like what UF is doing but don't get your enemies confused, and don't insult UF by saying that they're doing this to boost CD sales.
Whats the big deal about Kazaa anyway? Is looking at porn against school rules too? How about dancing or holding hands with the opposite sex?
IANAL, but if I remember correctly, DOWNLOADING music is not against any law whatsoever. SHARING it is (copyright violation, not stealing, kthx).
So if you're on UF's network and downloading copyrighted works, well, then the only thing you're in violation of is their TOS (which probably says you are forbidden from downloading copyrighted works which do not belong to you). In which case, yes, it seems a little retarded for them to be forcing you to watch propaganda.
+++ATH0
Imagine creating a cool new protocol and getting "punished" for trying to run it.
What a bunch of fucking sheep.
Tech Public Policy stuff
http://www.fordham.edu/
They never imposed downloading restrictions. Yes, they throttled us, but I think that was entirely reasonable.
Sure, their network topology was for shit (8-IP subnets connected to the backbone with *cable modems*. Ugh.), and UDP couldn't be routed out of the school, but there were no content restrictions or quotas.
+++ATH0
No, it was blocked for "all intents and purposes". What are they teaching in college these days, d00d? Certainly not English...
UF could have monitored bandwidth only (cutting off those who use too much) which would not have required any sort of monitoring and could have effectively addressed the problems. Furthermore, bandwidth access doesn't require the administrator maintenance that keeping up with the Jones (or Kazaa variants) will inevitably require. Instead, UF chose an extraordinarily intrusive system to monitor usage. The concept behind ICARUS is similar to that supporting all DRM. I pay money to restrict my behavior to protect someone else from a reality (the ability of digital media to be copied) they refuse to acknowledge. I get no benefit, other than the "right" to buy disabled goods at an increased price while allowing others access to my life in ways that I would willingly give very few people. Unlike TCMP and the other trusted computing variants, where I (theoretically) have a choice not to buy their products, UF students have no choice but to support this - even if they choose to use other methods of web access, their tuition still supports it.
When someone chooses a restrictive method to achieve an end when a less restrictive one would do as well, the restriction is part of the goal. The potential of a government entity to decide what is good usage and what is bad usage with very little say (and even less for those with insufficient money to afford off-campus Internet access) is not good for anyone - if they can do it to them, they can do it to you. The fact that UF wishes to support the RIAA's mass delusion that they can control media absolutely should not require me (if I were a UF student) to support it as well.
The reason Daedelus made his wings was to escape King Minos. He knew the risks and explained them to his son very clearly. He made wings for his son so that they could escape to freedom together, knowing the dangers ahead and the desparate situation if they remained behind. As they took off Icarus, Daedelus's son, was happy to be free and was enjoying his wings and flew a bit too close to the sun and the wax that held them in place melted and he fell to his death, in spite of his fathers warnings. The vehicle of his freedom cost him his life. The price of freedom for Daedelus was the life of his son, but he was free, and his son died free. The moral of the story is that freedom has risks and must be taken seriously and that life under tyranny isn't a life at all. Freedom can lead to self destruction, but freedom is preferable to tyranny no matter what the cost and no matter what the risk.
Ironically, the ICARUS system is all about imprisoning youth, shutting down college kids from the world and controlling them. They will never be offered the opportunity to be free. If the ICARUS system were to trully follow its Greek Mythology metaphor, it would be more aptly named the MINOS system, as it is a system of control, not a tool for liberation. It would be better to trust the college students, let them fly, and if they go too close to the RIAA sun, they will get burned, but it should be thier choice. Choice, good or bad, is an essential element of liberty. Liberty should not be restricted over something as trivial as music sharing.
Why commit puny crimes when you can commit enormous crimes, Enron scale crimes, and walk away scott free with $billions. The point is to screw the system before it screws you.
The one lesson I have learned in my life is you can never have enough.
Obviously you haven't experienced UF's amazing one-party (oops...unified) student government system. The opposition party, whose name changes every year, usually gets 1 or 2 seats out of about 70 (last election they didn't grab a one) because of stuff like this
This SG also thinks Sugar Ray is the hot new thing resulting in the lamest Gator Growl ever. We've still got football...er...damn!
I mean, if you have to take some sort of Copyright ethics class, personally I'd love to get busted and be forced to take that, just to point out exactly what is wrong with it.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
How about they make a copy of the Mercedes Benz blueprints and build themselves an exact copy of the car instead? Copyright infringement and theft are not the same thing.
Do you know that their student bookstore doesn't? Is the drop in CD sales affecting the sources of income for the University of florida? If not, isn't this a stupid comment?
No, but your comment is.
The *AA companies aren't using the U of FL as a tool to attack the end users because of their principled allegiance to an abstract concept of intellectual property law. They are supposed to be doing this in order to maximize profits for their stockholders by selling more records. If record sales go down as a result of their actions as any reasonable person familiar with the music scene would expect, it means they're harassing their customers without legitimate reasons.
Yes, downloading copyrighted material is illegal, whether you think this is right or wrong. If you don't like this, go to a different university, or get a private net connection.
Were the students informed that their Net access was going to be robo-censored before they paid their tuition and housing fees? Would you like to find you are being harassed for downloading Linux ISOs via Bit-torrent?
Your getting upmodded to 5 is a grim comment about the intelligence of at least 3 of our mods... speaking as one of them.
Tech Public Policy stuff
And these Black Talon, expanding 9mm slugs could be used to shoot burglars, but unfortunately, they could also be used on cops or anyone else, and that is why they are outlawed. Potential misuse is an issue with any product, if that misuse endangers a community, perhaps it needs to be sanctioned. Unregulated use of University bandwidth is a huge cost. A few excessive students suck up 90% of the bandwidth. Why should the rest of the students pay for that 1% who go crazy with the P2P. This is what probably started this issue, and the fact that the activity was illegal only served to further the cause. Your personal freedom comes at the expense of the broader community when it comes to P2P at a University.
(rant)
I think this all needs to be put in perspective. WHEN I was a kid, we didn't have P2P, all we had was an Apple II and before that, paper and pencil. I remember when calculators were too expensive for the average person to buy cheaply and ran on large batteries. There was a time in my life when all of the computing power in the whole world was equivalent to what now exists within a single top tier supercomputer. That society, the pre-digital society founded and built America.
By letting the machine control the medium of life, you allow the machine to dictate the terms upon which your life plays out. If you define yourself by your software, I would say you are a social and intellectual cripple. The social fabric, and freedoms and liberty around you may crumble, but you are blind to this injustice because your existence is filtered and packaged around a logical sequence of events that only make sense within your computer dominated mindset. Incompatible life experience cannot be inserted into your world without being hacked into a compatible form and its richness, complexity and paradoxical pleasures are stripped away. You cannot truly understand or put in perspective, the events that happen around you because you are controlled by the medium. Although you will express outrage at a percieved injustice, you will never understand the how or the why of that injustice because you are blinded by your limitations. In the end you will be a slave to your own bias and constrictive lack of options. You will live in your own little world, autonomously free to do as you please within the confines of your little box. The price of freedom and liberty is much more than arguing P2P, it is knowing when to stand up and fight for your rights, and having the courage to step forward when the time comes.
(/end rant )
Don't copy... don't copy that floppy!
I wonder who modded that redundant ;-)
... Because in this case, a key part of the action they're trying to prevent is indeed stealing. The US Code recognizes theft of service, and it covers unauthorized use of telecommunications.
If a UF student violates their terms of service to illegally download copyrighted material, that can easily be considered to be theft of service.
Slashdot is entertaining like pro wrestling is entertaining
The blueprints are intellectual property, and in the case of digital media, the blueprints are the product. ;-)
Shut it, fanboy! Shht! Shht! I said SHHT!
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