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MPAA Infiltrating Campus Nets with Software
unassimilatible writes "CNet is reporting that the MPAA is starting to infiltrate college campuses with automated anti-piracy software. Known as the Automated Copyright Notice System (ACNS), the technology promises to make copyright enforcement easier on peer-to-peer networks, saving schools and Internet service providers (ISPs) time and money. ACNS allows them to automatically restrict or cut off Internet access for alleged infringers on notice from a record label or movie studio. Though not specifically ACNS, a similar system is set to go live Monday at the University of California at Los Angeles, one of the nation's largest universities with 37,500 students. UCLA's Copyright Policy page makes no reference of this system being implemented."
Why are colleges going to let some outside entity install software on their networks?
You want what with that?
Piracy would be so much easier to stop if it wasnt so damn fun. just knowning some corporate fat cat is losing sleep makes most people do it, that and the internet on a platter
Because all they have to do is tell the universities "Let us install this and we promise we won't prosecute you if we find any infringers".
Very crafty....
1) MPAA
2) Do you fear riAA or mpAA in .uk?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
ok so there are legal uses of file sharing software, but those who distribute material that isn't legal haven't got a leg to stand on... and deserve everything that gets thrown at them...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
...from a virus? In my mind this is even more invasive than the spyware/adware I have to delete daily from my machine.
The MPAA seems to be targeting titles that are not available on video yet. That in itself is ok in my book. My biggest gripe with the RIAA is how do they know that I don't own the song? I obviously don't own a copy of Starsky and Hutch because it hasn't been released on video yet. I don't like the possibility of violating privacy rights, so I am naturally skeptical of the ACNS system. The article did nothing to relieve those fears.
With every MPAA story like this, you get all kinds of sheep coming out of the woodwork stating things like, "Good, downloading movies is illegal and this is just!" without realizing a lot of your rights are going down the toilet simply because some cry baby organization/company is claiming "copyright infringment" even though it's been going on for YEARS, long before the internet ever made it popular.
These Universities need to tell them to piss off. They're just gonna get it even worse once anonymous P2P hits the masses.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Surely the following has been brought up before...
1. If I'm downloading copies of song which I already own on CD, then I'm not infringing, am I? Maybe I'm just too lazy to rip my own disks. I can think of other reasons why I might do that.
2. So if a high percentage (or even not so high percentage) of P2P users are downloading legitimate files, i.e. things they own or are otherwise allowed to access, doesn't this make it darn near impossible for the MPAA/RIAA/NSA/CIA/FBI to decide whose infringing and who is not ?
So basically we're back to the guilty and proven innocent mindset which is becoming all-too-common in the Corporate States of America (TM)
Absolute statements are never true
From the article:
Several studios and record labels, including Universal Music Group, have begun to standardize the tags at the bottom of their takedown notices into XML, code that allows data to be used seamlessly in various contexts. The digital tags contain the name of the copyrighted material that's been comprised, the copyright holder's name, date and time stamp, and the Internet Protocol address of the infringer. Receipt of this tag triggers the internal notification process at a university or ISP using the system.
So, if there's some college student they don't like, would hackers start creating these "standard" XML tags and sending them to university IT departments?
--- You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad- Neal (not Cowboy) Boortz
As a copyright holder (for example, I create an independent film that I want to protect), what do you think would happen if I demand access to this system to do my own enforcement? What if every copyright holder in America had access to the system as well? No, we wouldn't have access to this system. Obviously such a system shouldn't be in place, but it's presence represents an unfairness to everyone except the MPAA.
This is why we (used to) have a thing called due-process, to keep private entities from enforcing what they consider the law. But we all know due-process doesn't contribute to election campaigns.
_______
2B1ASK1
Do it or we'll see you in court. Yeh, that's some choice alright. As for the covertness, how many staff and students do you think know about it?
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
As a long term ISP and University network admin, people that let themselves be caught are a pain in my ass to enforce. They cost me money and time in terms of following up on these damn letters from the MPAA/RIAA, and they make me sit in meetings with worried lawyers regarding company or campus policy.
As one who has also run a streaming media server since 2000, has downloaded mp3 since 1996, and ftp'd media around since 1992, all I can say is you people are idiots if you keep getting caught, and you're making my job hard, and I have no problem with laying the smack down.
Figure out how to stay under the radar, AOL'ers and undergrads. That way everybody's happy. Your problem is you've had p2p file sharing handed to you on a platter since Napster and you expect it like a right.
Let's see what this means in minus-Internet terms:
Let's say a school receives a complaint from the copyright holders that students are videotaping movies off the screen during routine movie shows in student theaters.
Would it be right for the school to let the copyright holder send goons over to monitor the theaters with "anti-piracy" equipment and haul off offenders and slap him with a huge prison/fine sentence?
Or would it be more prudent for the school to tell the copyright holders to fsck off and let them handle the situation on their own - and suspend the student or dole out a more suitable sentence - according to the school policies?
This move by the MPAA stinks of highhandedness and interference with the school's internal matters - in this case - usage of the school network against Usage Policies.
AFAIK most schools have very formal and complete network (or general campus facilities) usage policies which detail the punishments for misusing them. Why do we need MPAA and other corporate entities to police the campus when the school and campus law enforcement have been doing it very efficiently for the past few decades? Assholes (*)
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Actually, commercial services use a format with digital rights managements built in either AAC (iTunes) or WMA (all the others). On the other hand, if you ripped your files to those formats, you might be less susceptible to detection.
In any event, I don't think they're looking at drive contents as much as they're looking for file sharing behavior. My guess is that you could still sneaker-net a CD-R of mp3s to your buddies on campus.
The MPAA are justified IMHO in worrying about p2p use on campuses. There is really no argument that movie downloading is a problem for traditional cinema and DVD sales.
But this attitude of "War on P2P" is a failure: it's a failure because framing the discussion in terms of right and wrong misses the point, it's a failure because it will alienate a generation of consumers and artists, and it's a failure because it will get in the way of developing long-term business models based more accurately on what people actually want and are willing to pay for.
It's impossible to force people - through policing, through DRM, through marketing - to pay for something they can get for free. I can't think of any examples where this has worked. It's like the many laws that try to mandate what people can do in private (sex, drugs, rock'n roll). The laws sound fine, but they fail.
The movie industry (like the music industry) must move to models of higher-volume, lower prices, and (most importantly) much lower internal costs. There is no reason why this business should have fatter profit margins than - say - retailing.
The media industries will say that the risk and cost of promoting unknown artists or failed movies means they need fat profits on successful ones. But this is a circular argument: using the new distribution and promotion models that the Internet affords makes it _extremely_ cheap to produce and promote new talent.
Anyhow, the pattern is classic: the industry will scream and kick, blackmail and sue, get government and industry support, and finally collapse as new young rivals (probably from other countries where vested interests form less of a barrier) storm the market with products that the consumer _really_ wants.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Ok, so you got this letter. Were you in fact sharing without permission what they alleged you were sharing? If so, bien fait, you asked for it, you got it. If not, they are in error and you have nothing to be afraid of.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
CNS allows them to automatically restrict or cut off Internet access for alleged infringers on notice from a record label or movie studio.
It's nice to see no trial is necessary to make every student guilty. Guess that constitution thing doesn't apply unless your a corporate executive.
if it gets the people using kazaa off of our network, I see no problem with it. More bandwidth for the rest of us.
Problem with that is it might infringe on legitimate traffic as well. For example, not all P2P sharing is of copyrighted music and files. This seems to filter though, seeking only copyright material as opposed to stopping P2P traffic.
In this case it all depends on the implentation. As a sys admin I applaud the better security this promises (better trojan and virus policing etc). However this type of system can be abuse easily and I hope the universities will see this and act with caution.
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Yes, but privacy issues are less of a concern when it requires money, effort, and manpower to execute. Your cops from the street example, a reasonable assumption is that unless the cops had significant evidence to do so, they wouldn't waste the resources to monitor *you*. In that way we are safe from undue privacy violations of that sort.
The problem occurs when automated computer systems get involved, where it not only becomes possible, but efficient to monitor a very large percentage of the population for *unacceptable behaviour*. It is this sort of surveillance that becomes an unnacceptable invasion of privacy because it would take a very minor tweak for such automated systems to locate and identify people who distribute material, say, opposing a political party. The fact that a simple corporation has this power, and doesn't require a concerted effort by a governing body to implement makes it doubly bad.
Which is why, I am happy to live in Canada, where judges rule against these sorts of things.
This is not a sig.
The biggest problem of anonymous p2p is that if the *perception* becomes that its 'only used for illegal activities', then it can be cut off totally. This would kill legitimate use as well..
Since they cant monitor who is doing what for verification of 'acceptable content', the ports just get closed at the firewall for everyone.
If you move ports to something thats harder to block ( like port 80 for example ), they just look for above average bandwidth use to 'non official hosts', and cut their MAC address off...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Since the RIAA/MPAA have become de-facto law enforcement agencies, the schools don't have much choice.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
This 'hustler' mentality of the RIAA and their obsession with tracking down and punishing song traders is not in their best interest.
Considering that there are only five or so corporations that 'own' the world's commercial cultural product, it's not like someone else is going to get the money if someone buys record X while someone else downloads record Y. If there were still hundreds of independent record companies, then this mentality would be reasonable. But there's not. And the media executives should grow out of the 'hustler' mentality that was the way the music business used to work when they were coming up through the ranks. Things are different now.
What the RIAA/MPAA doesn't seem to realize is that their biggest long-term problem is not that people will 'steal' their product, it's that people will become so uninterested in their product that they won't be able to give it away even if they tried. Creating an atmosphere where consumers are threatened with prison and property confiscation for listening to RIAA product will go a long way to creating a subliminal distrust of commercial music. Eventually people will go out of their way to avoid exposure to RIAA product simply to avoid the possibility of arbitrary legal harassment.
When the RIAA customers are gone, it will be really difficult to get them back. Because the techniques that they are employing now will destroy any trust that people have in the RIAA. Trust in this case meaning that people believe that what the RIAA say's is legal use, will actually be legal use.
As far as the MPAA product is concerned, it is absurd to harass downloaders. They need to cut their costs for film production and promotion. Then they need to cut the admission prices for going to the films in theatres. Few people will download a 1 gigabyte movie when they can pay $2 to see it in a safe, comfortable theatre with quality projection and large screen.
An example of this is the Valley Theatre in Beaverton Oregon (a suburb of Portland). Built in the 1960s, they now show second-run features on a giant 50 foot screen and have started a 20 admissions for $20 pricing policy with $3 for single standard admission. Who wants to spend 10 hours downloading a DivX of LOTR when you can see it on a big screen for a dollar?
All the RIAA/MPAA problems have reasonable solutions. Their big problem is that they're not reasonable people.
They claim they lose billions of dollars a year as a result of P2P sharing, but those numbers are based on some faulty assumptions. The main one is that people who illegally download copyrighted material would have otherwise purchased that material. Of course I don't have hard evidence that the assumption is false, but ask yourself, have you deprived anyone of business lately as a result of your illegal file-sharing?
It is intellectually dishonest to try to defend this action by saying that the "billions of dollars lost" claimed by the **AA is inflated. Let's assume for a moment that those numbers are inflated. Of course they are inflated. Maybe they don't lose $3 billion/year from people "sharing" copyrighted material. Maybe they "only" lose $100 million. Or maybe they "only" lose $50 million. Whatever that number might turn out to be, the number is a real, statistically significant value. The fact of the matter is that people who trade software/songs/IP are cutting into the revenues of the companies that fund the production of this work and the artists who create it, however small their final cut may be...
There is a fascinating discussion that can be had around copyright/IP reform on its own merits -- but claiming that the **AA numbers are "inflated" is not the place from which to launch. You're getting caught up in details that do nothing to further your case...
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
The only thing close to legal authorization for copyright self help came in the now doomed UCITA model law (Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act). Only two states (MD and VA) adopted the law, and even then (my understanding is) both of them amended it to not include the self-help provision.
Even under UCITA, it required express consent by both sides. End users would have to agree to this remedy (which I suppose won't be hard in the university situation - because the campus ISP is the only game in town). If that happened, the act would authorize the content owning company to remotely shut you down, to prevent you from infringing. The idea was to let software vendors shut down dead beat software buyers who didn't pay up. Nobody seemed to like it (self help thankfully isn't too popular in general).
Anyway - long story short, since most, if not all states expressly rejected this kind of industry self help - I wouldn't be surprised if a court took that to mean that the legislatures are not exactly on the self-help bandwagon (yet).
That's how I'd fight this.
Ryan Kennedy opposes comm
If a university has spent the money to build a infrastructure that's worthwhile, and also have people to monitor it, why not save time and money for everyone and just have them use existing software to monitor what sort of traffic and activity is moving on their network? It's likely they have the software already, but simply don't have anyone checking it.
It seems simple to me. Reports indicate that there is Kazaa activity on Port 123, you turn off that LAN port. The user no longer has LAN access, and must call someone to get it fixed. At this point, they're reminded that P2P activity is prohibited by university policy. This is their first warning. The next time they're caught, they'll have their port shut down for a month, and the third offense will have their port turned off permanently.
If universities feel they have to play hardball in this area, doesn't this seem like a more logical, and wise way for them to do it, opposed to allowing someone else into their network, who has an agenda that doesn't match that of the university?
(And on a side note, many universities have grant money for doing military research. I'm certain that the DOD would not apprecaite the *AA having any sort of 'monitoring' going on of potentially sensitive research data that might be travelling on the university network.)
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Who's forcing you to live in a dorm? Parents? Take up your beef with them. If economic neccessity is forcing you to live in the dorms, then boo-fucking-hoo. It's still school property, and school rules. If you don't like it, get a bigger grant or loan and move out. Don't like school bandwidth policies? Transfer to a different school. Most states still declare colleges In Loco Parentis, so you're NEVER going to have the kind of freedom in a dorm that you'll have in your own apartment.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The second that my university decides that the RIAA and the MPAA should be administering the network to decide if any violations are made, is the second I transfer to another university.
I don't pay a huge "technology fee" just to have the wolves guarding the hen house. The MPAA and RIAA are a modern mafia, complete with government support.
Attention Universities: Some of you should realize that there is a market for a bastion of freedom. I'd gladly pay a legal fee in my student fees/tuition if it meant I could be protected from fucking cartels like the RIAA and bullshit legislation like the DMCA.
since not enough people are dumb enough to pay full (inflated) prices for the material
And can someone explain to me why recorded music is valued by the medium it's delivered on and not on its artistic merit or market demand?
I haven't heard the argument that book prices are "inflated", because ink and paper are cheap technology. How many folks are OCR'ing a $25 hardcover of the latest King novel and throwing a text file up on P2P?
Is a Monet only worth the paint and canvas? If so, I wonder why museums have so much security?
What was the $45 I just spent on a live concert for? I mean, sound waves are free--aren't they?
No way. First of all, *nobody* is forced to live in a dorm -- you are attending college out of your own choice, and are paying for the privilege of receiving an education. The internet access provided by your university is entirely at their discretion -- they can revoke it, throttle it, or slap you upside the head with it. There are many students who live under the misconception that the school must adhere to the same contract rules as, say, an ISP or any other utility. Most schools can change their terms of service with little or no oversight by students (and sometimes no oversight by higher administration), so if you don't like it, start a 'watchdog' student oversight volunteer group and report changes in big posters around campus.
You *can* complain, which is effective if you can get huge number of students in on the 'outrage' of the 'monopolistic and unfair' policies of your university. Especially if you can coincide with a big recruitment weekend...
You don't have any *rights* to an internet connection at college, unless you've signed some contract with your dorm fees (which would be neat!). This is a great reason to ask about the IT policies of the universities to which you are applying (and IT funding, while you're at it.)
ps. I'm a grandfather too... became one at the sprightly age of 46... nothing wrong with that age... divide it by two and see how old I was when I became a father... 23... so the lady you're disparaging was a perfectly respectable age herself when she first became a mother...
now if we were great-grandparents in our late 40's...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
...why the p2p technology is so weak. It should not be so hard to implement the stuff with those security precautions:
- all direct traffic encrypted
- grant direct connection only to trusted peers
- for non-trusted peer, a connection negotiation with the help of the trusted peer chain only
- random proxying: non trusted peer receives via randomly selected node, who acts as a proxy, effectively hiding IP of the origin
There you are, staring at me again.
VERY good point.
Actually, I did read the Harvard study and I found it fascinating. But I suppose that is part of my point... we could get into a he-said/she-said pissing match about how much it hurts sales, what the net effect is, etc. But that's entirely incidental, isn't it? There's a number of different ways you could spin this all. You could point out that people have a fairly fixed amount that they are willing to budget for entertainment. If they find tracks that they really want from a certain artist, sales will go down on these particular tracks but they'll still have that much more money to spend on harder to find tracks. The aggregate effect might be neither an increase or a decrease in overall sales but this doesn't take away from the fact that money that would have been spent on the one artist is now going to a different artist. (Say what you will about how little artists might make, with our current model their contracts/future contracts are based on sales. If you cut into that, you hurt them. Period.) You could point out that a lot of filesharing is done by under-20somethings with a limited budget who would not have otherwise made that purchase. But simply because they would not have purchased the thing doesn't make it right for them to suddenly have a copy in their possession...
Like it or hate it, the owners of the copyright on these works are the ones who get to determine who gets to listen. If I am hosting a concert and the hall isn't at capacity, should I be compelled to overlook everyone else sneaking in the door after 8PM until the hall is filled just because there are empty seats? Does your sneaking in make it OK? (No one else was hurt, the seat was just sitting there.) There is the much larger question of the right of companies to license their product to individuals as they see fit. This is a question of property rights. I know it isn't popular to talk about property rights on Slashdot. But it is important to look at the historical context of ownership and look at what happens in counties/cultures where those rights are not respected...What happens to innovation and what happens to the capital? And there are important counter-question about the rights of individuals in this context, too. These are the questions that should be addressed/answered. The other ones about the money made/lost are distractions. Debating the question of money lost won't get us anywhere. Debating the larger questions will allow us to reach the consensus that we (all of us) will eventually need to...
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
Kicking out people who sneak into a show is hardly invasive. Tracking your downloading habits is quite a different issue.
Here, you and I couldn't agree more. I think the lengths to which the RIAA and MPAA have gone to track and blackmail people accused of violating copyright is alarming...and I fear the worst is yet to come.
I think it is fair to say that wholesale, widespread theft (sharing without the express consent of the original copyright holder, whatever you want to call it) of a product might call into question the distribution method an industry uses to get to market --the **AA ignores this at its peril. But it in no way excuses the action of individuals taking a product without the copyright holder's consent. I think the concert hall analogy is valid in that the owner of the establishment is in the right in asserting that you should not be taking their product without paying.
I mean, isn't that at the heart of this? Honestly admitting that individuals should not be taking this product does not give the **AA carte blanche to do whatever they want to go after offenders. If you're stealing a CD from Wal-Mart, they can't shoot you... there are limits. Defining the limits is part of how the issue will eventually be resolved. For the discussion to be fruitful, we should focus on the actual issues at hand and not try to defend something that, in the end, is indefensible.
Just my two cents.
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.