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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.
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.
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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
There's no 'loss of privacy'. We don't sit and watch every mouse click you make you know, we do have other things to do as well.
...downloading copyrighted material is perfectly legal if you have permission to do so.
To me the most disturbing thing is that "violators" (note the quotes, folks!) are forced to watch **AA FUD/disinfo/propoganda. Since when is it acceptable for a publically owned university to spew off corporate propoganda? And yet, few ppl even blink at it. Sad, folks. Just fucking sad.
#define DRM chmod 000
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.
...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, I guess the alternative is to collect names and notify the RIAA/MPAA of your copyright violations so they can sue you. I'd personally rather sit through propoganda, but whatever floats your boat. The easy way to avoid either penalty is to STOP STEALING. Until you and your friends lobby Congress to pass a law that makes copyright infringement legal, quit using an excuse about "failing business models" as reason for your rampant piracy.
What is also disturbing is the future potential. What happens when ISPs start using it? They decide to censor, oh, porn... Homeland Security secretly subpoenas ISPs for those who got bounced a certain number of times... you get the idea. Not that I'm a paranoid, tinfoil-hat-wearing weirdo, but there is definitely potential for great misuse here, particularly of the Orwellian kind.
(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.
"Students want to use it, they sign to say they'll abide by the conditions. And that includes monitoring."
And students who value freedom, will choose a university which doesn't make a point of allowing unscrupulous 'businesses' to search peoples' data.
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.
mmmmm...yeah...and law enforcement wouldn't be there if not for my tax dollars. So they should stay the hell out of my business right? Bother those who do not pay taxes.
I understand your direction, but just because student tuition (might) account for the bulk of the yearly budget (it is about 65% at our University) doesn't simply buy their freedom.
You're right. The university has every right to monitor usage...
And talented students and faculty have every right to attend other institutions that don't impose unreasonable restrictions.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
"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.
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.
It is ridiculous to believe that a student, who pays a fortune, and makes that university their life, does not have the right to use the Internet connection HOWEVER they feel, as long as it is not illegal. And, frankly, I do not believe it should be the universities job to monitor their usage in anyway (other than to maintain the stability of the network, or maybe for pure research) or to restrict their usage even if to maintain legality.
Let the law do the law's work.
And, to finish my rant, let me also say: The more restriction university's put on their students, the less creativity we will see. What would have happened to the Internet had Stanford stopped Yahoo's traffic because it damaged the 'network and was an unsupervised host on the network.
"Ain't I a stinka..." - Bugs
True, but Universities have always been extremely sensitive to academic freedom and research. I would be suprised if no protest or unwanted publicity is not garnered by this little software product. Also, given the competition for enrolling students nationwide, I wonder how quickly they will fold after receiving a "little" bad press.
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
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
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.
Civil disobedience requires that the person committing it be prepared to pay the consequences. The idea behind civil disobedience is that many people being punished under a law that they consider unjust will send a message to the world. Hiding from the law and complaining uselessly about enforcement is not part of the package. Then again, when Thoreau wrote about it, our civil liberties were not quite as restricted as they are today and a protest from within a jail house would actually be heard.
t'nera semordnilap
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?
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.
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.
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.