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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."
From the article:
And:
Sounds like a case of buzzworditus... can one even legally install Open Source software on Cisco harware? I mean, besides the Open Source stuff that Cisco has pirated.
Infiltrate? Who's words are those? The posting makes it sound as if the RIAA is covertly sneaking this software onto campus networks. The colleges do have a choice whether to use ACNS or not. Although I am sure that the RIAA will be putting a lot of pressure on those who choose not to.
How long before the *AA starts suing ISP/Unis which don't implement this for lack of due diligence?
Put identity in the browser.
if it gets the people using kazaa off of our network, I see no problem with it. More bandwidth for the rest of us.
Karma: Negative (Mostly affected by dorm trolling)
This is what I received, I've edited some of it sensitive material out. I had to acknoledge that I had stopped sharing this file or my internet connection would be dropped
:
Subject: Unauthorized Distribution of Copyrighted Motion Pictures
(Reference#: xxxxxx)
MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA, INC.
15503 VENTURA BOULEVARD
ENCINO, CALIFORNIA 91436
UNITED STATES
Anti-Piracy Operations
PHONE: (818) 728 - 8127
Email: MPAA@copyright.org
Thursday, November 13, 2003
Name: XXX XXXX
E-mail: xxx@xxx
ISP: xxx University
Via Fax/Email
RE: Unauthorized Distribution of Copyrighted Motion Pictures
MPA Case Name: directconnect://xxx:ipaddr/
Reference#: 2937735
Date of Infringement: 11/12/2003 2:28:05 PM GMT
Dear
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) represents the following motion picture production and distribution companies:
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.
Disney Enterprises, Inc.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
Paramount Pictures Corporation
TriStar Pictures, Inc.
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
United Artists Pictures, Inc.
United Artists Corporation
Universal City Studios, LLLP
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
We have received information that an individual has utilized the IP address, xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, at the above noted date and time to offer downloads of copyrighted motion picture(s) through a "peer-to-peer" service, including such title(s) as:
Chicago
The distribution of unauthorized copies of copyrighted motion pictures constitutes copyright infringement under the Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 106(3). This conduct may also violate the laws of other countries, international law, and/or treaty obligations.
Since you own this IP address, we request that you immediately do the following:
1. Disable access to the individual who has engaged in the conduct described above, and;
2. Take appropriate action against the account holder under your Abuse Policy/Terms of Service Agreement.
On behalf of the respective owners of the exclusive rights to the copyrighted material at issue in this notice, we hereby state, pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 512, that the information in this notification is accurate and that we have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owners, their respective agents, or the law.
Also pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we hereby state, under penalty of perjury, that we are authorized to act on behalf of the owners of the exclusive rights being infringed as set forth in this notification.
Please contact us at the above listed address or by replying to this email should you have any questions. Kindly include the above noted Reference # in the subject line of all email correspondence.
We thank you for your cooperation in this matter. Your prompt response is requested.
Respectfully,
Thomas Temple
Director
Worldwide Internet Enforcement
"A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age." -Robert Frost
Getting network access as a student on a campus usually requires signing a blanket document that acknowledges that that the campus can monitor traffic that you send/receive. On many campuses, a student's choice is likely to be sign the form, or not get any access.
Of course, you could always ssl all of your connections. Hmmm...that could get ugly quickly. I wonder how that would stack up against the DMCA?
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
the old napster trick of the rot13 of all the file names and or the piglatin changes or even reverse naming...
hell simply rot-13 the entire mp3 file and they cant detect squat.
what will be the best trick is for people to set up garbage throwers to make the damned thing give so many false positives that it is deemed useless...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
At my college(which shall remain anonymous), we have a pretty crappy network. It isn't the physical lines or routers that cause massive amounts of downtown and lag, its the Computing Center who run hte network. However, one thing I know for sure is that the Computing Center will never implement this type of system. The big reason being: It's more work.
Installing and managing such a system is just more work for them. Lesser reasons, such as added network instability, security issues(who stops the MPAA from going too far), and apathy also play a role. Not to mention that the Computing Center staff is not so incompetent to believe that those who want to will find a way to bypass or utilize the system to their advantage. Think about it, if you could trick the system into thinking someone was sharing music or movies, you can get them disconnected and sent a letter from the MPAA. Personally, I wouldn't feel safe giving an automated system such power in a large network like my campus(12,000 students).
How long until some worm is written that uses the automatic notice/account-disabling feature to systematically cause the disabling of every account in existence?
Not long, I think.
.@.
A friend of mine once got an e-mail from a company that was hired (presumably by the MPAA) to search P2P networks for copyrighted material and send a cease and desist e-mail.
/. previously), there is just no way to be sure. Downloading each track would suck up a ton of bandwidth. And other methods might show false positives (Not that the **AA care about the truth, otherwise they wouldn't be on this anti-P2P kick). If my college cut me from the network that I paid to use on a false positive, I'd be seriously pissed.
Basically, my friend had downloaded one of those 2 hour trailer loops thinking it was a movie, then forgot to delete it after he realized it was not the movie. The company sent him and e-mail, having looked at the title and not the content. He wrote them a pretty mean e-mail back.
So, how does the software identify copyrighted music on P2P? Presumably it could do an MD5 hash against a master, but that would vary if, say, some time was cut off the end. They couldn't possibly account for all possible variations on a file. They could check ID5 information that is provided through the P2P metadata, but that can be wrong frequently. Finally, they can check the file name. But what if I took a liking to misnaming some of my own music?
Without downloading the song and making an aural comparison (there is technology available that could discern, as AT&T Wireless is apparently using it, as was reported on
In other news, automated cameras have been installed, issuing tickets to those who run red lights in the middle of the night when there's no other traffic, including police, around.
Vehicles have been equipped with "black box" devices, recording operations without the driver's knowledge or consent.
Eavesdropping equipment has also been installed in new vehicles, giving the ability to listen in on the occupants at any time.
Law enforcement uses special equipment to "see through" walls and observe the occupants inside a building, without a warrant because it's observable from the street.
I started this post attempting to be sarcastic, but every terrifying example of surveillance I could come up with has already been implemented.
We have always been at war with Eurasia.
Well, the RIAA are obviously not after the universities, but after those who illegally copy the RIAA's music. The universities are set to benefit from this, as bandwidth costs will go down as file sharing is reduced.
IANAL, but I don't think it's the universities' responsibility to keep their students from breaking the law, meaning that the RIAA couldn't prosecute the universities (and win) anyway.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
As much as the MPAA might suck, and as much as I'd hate to see this kind of technology employed in commercial networks, this would absolutely kick ass at my school.
Finally, they'd be able to cut off the bandwidth caps and packetshapers. Finally, I'd be able to install Gentoo, download a free SHN-encoded album from archive.org, or grab the next OpenCD without waking up the next morning to a disabled network jack and having to bitch and moan until it's reopenned. Finally, I'd have a solid enough connection to get a decent round of UT2k3 in after class.
Allowing network use policies to be enforced in a content-specific rather than cutting off legitimate uses of big chunks of bandwidth is a terrific idea.
Let's say I own a movie on VHS tape. Here at school, I don't have a VCR, so I can't watch my VHS movies. It is within my fair use rights, however, to format shift those tapes so that I can watch the movies. If i am too lazy, or don't have a VCR, I can simply download the movie. If people are not allowed to share the file, whether or not they actually have a legit license to it, it impedes my fair use right to format shifting under current US copyright law as established in "the betamax case"
I could just write something that generates a false positive, perhaps by reverse-engineering the kazaa search mechanism, and spoof it from every IP on campus....I could shut down the entire campus network in 15 minutes. :)
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
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.
What rights are you refering to? Granted the RIAA is a total sleazebag group that should be first up against the wall when the revolution comes, but in this specific case where is the rights violation?
Finkployd
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.
I don't recal where I heard it, so I might be wrong, but I think there's some law somewhere that says you do not have the right to change the format of media you own. So if you have a CD and you make a copy of that CD for backup purposes then it's legal. But if you have a CD and you rip it to MP3s, the format has changed and that is not legal. Same if you were to, say, convert your cassettes to CDs or vice versa. Therefore, your argument is a moot point since you're not supposed to rip your own CDs.
Like I said, I don't know if this is true or not. Can any other slashdotters confirm or deny?
I do have to agree with your observation but I don't agree with what the *AA are doing. Reason being is that I share files but the ones I share are from legitimate local bands that let thier stuff be shared. Many of the mp3s I actually downloaded fromt the bands website. Would they cut me off for that? I am breaking no laws. This is a gray area in their implementation that makes me nervous.
Evolution or ID?
Okay. Where can I download the source code? Coz acns.sourceforge.net and acns.freshmeat.net don't seeem to work.
The article is mentioning the loss of billions of dollars to piracy. Again it looks like the assumption is if it wasn't pirated, a legal sale would have taken place. I have a nephew who was in school and is now in the military serving in Kuait. I have seen his MP3 collection. If each track was a $1 sale instead of piracy, the assumption is he would have spent more on music during his stay at college than I spent on my new car. When I was that age and bought LP's and Tapes (Pre CD's by many years) my collection never even aproached the value of the 10 year old beater I drove at the time. I would have liked to buy an albun a week, but price was prohibitive and still is. I bought about 1 record every 2 or 3 months at that age. That's only 4-6 /year. After a decade I had my modest library of about 50 albums (1 boxful). I don't know many people who have invested over $200/year in CD's with or without piracy. Most people I know have a modest CD collection of 100 or less titles for a lifetime collection of $2,000 tops.
College students don't have the money in four years to outright buy new car that I have to get a loan for of many years. Piracy is an opentunistic act of copyright infringement, not theft. A college student with several thousand MP3's is not the theft of several thousand dollars of original recordings. They are cheap copies, not originals taken from rightful owners. Killing piracy of 1,000 tunes does not create the sales of 1,000 tunes at a buck each or create 1000 tunes now on the store shelves that weren't there for sale before. I doubt no matter how many copies iTunes sells of any song, they will have a sellout. Cost of duplication is cheap. The spin folks and the marketing folks both know this but are in denial.
Other than the spin on the financial loss, the article was interesting in the war on piracy.
I personaly buy less CD's now because I'm afraid of getting a non-returnable deliberatly defective disk. I look for the Compact Disk logo for compatibility with my rip-mix-burn setup and portable devices. There are very few CD's anymore with the Compact Disk logo. It makes shopping for a CD like panning for gold. There is lots of shiny stuff out there, but finding the real thing is getting harder as the supply dwindles. I now visit the DVD section instead of the useless CD section. It's money better spent.
I'm currently enjoying Old Time radio which is now in the public domain. It's free.
The truth shall set you free!
but I think there's some law somewhere that says you do not have the right to change the format of media you own
I am not a lawyer.
But I know that you're wrong. "Format shifting" is Fair Use--so long as you don't share it. If it wasn't, how would you ever legally put MP3s on your PC?
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.
Hmmm. Last week I was over at my local computer store and I bought this nifty product called Mandrake Linux. Some idiot tried to convince me that I could download the thing for free off the internet. What an idiot. He obviously had some kind of grudge against the store.
Looks like it's time for some bad UCLA garage band to release one of their awful songs with a catchy title as an MP3. You know, a common title that just happens to be the same as some song owned by an RIAA member, but a truly original awful work. When the takedown notice comes, they should go to the law school and find someone willing to counter-sue the RIAA for misrepresenting their copyright!
guilty until proven innocent. its the new american way.
have you tried applying for jobs lately? more and more companies require a drug test. another case of 'we think you're guilty; prove us wrong and we'll hire you'.
sigh.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
When my university installed a traffic shaping device to limit P2P access, all of the usual networks essentially became useless. (Transfer rates measured in bytes per second.)
The students came up with a clever way around it, using a program based on Gnucleus LAN (I think.) Basically, it's like a version of Gnutella that limits itself to inside the LAN.
Since there are so many people on the campus network, it was every bit as useful as Kazaa and the others, and transfers were many (many!) times faster.
The best part is, network utilization between the campus network and the internet went down, since all of the traffic was now confined to the LAN.
Well, they are basically wiretapping everyone on the network without a judge's signature.
Once the worm is released that jumps from computer to computer, using the MPAA software to disable it (after spreading of course) the university admins will have to weigh the cost of fixing all the computers against hiring a lawyer to fight the MPAA.
Schools are also presently paying to get packet-shaping devices to try to slow/block P2P shares because they get in the way of other users, or would require the school to get more overall bandwidth. The RIAA is of course offering this service for free.
Schools are buying packet-shapers to manage the traffic level associated with P2P. The RIAA is offering them content-based filtering, which could be argued to remove what little common carrier status still exists for the School-cum-ISP.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
UCLA Helpdesk: Sup?
Student: Seems my Internet is down.
UCLA Helpdesk: Room?
Student: 201
UCLA Helpdesk: Hmm, lemme have a look.
UCLA Helpdesk: Ah, yeah, says here that Jack's Car Shop's FAC-U system has detected a copyright infringment on your computer.
Student: What? Jack's Car Shop?
UCLA Helpdesk: Uhuh
Student: So what's this FAC-U thing?
UCLA Helpdesk: Friendly Automated Copyright-infringment Underpants.
Student: Ex-abuse-me?
UCLA Helpdesk: Just an underpants targetting system that checks for copyright infringement.
Student: So what kinda copyright of Jack's Car Shop am I violating?!
UCLA Helpdesk: Uh, I dunno. Don't worry, an expert from Jack's Car Shop will soon be over to have a look at your computer.
Student: What's he gonna do?
UCLA Helpdesk: They usually come with a USB key and need a little time alone with your computer.
UCLA Helpdesk: You probably got nothing to worry about.
Student: WTF? That's crazy. Are there any other companies that have such systems running here?
UCLA Helpdesk: Doh, are you kidding me? Of course! Every company that owns intellectual property has one.
Student: So Jack's Car Shop has intellectual property?
UCLA Helpdesk: That's what he says.
Student: And you just take his word?
UCLA Helpdesk: Listen son, these systems seem to be working quite well, at the moment we have 2,314 infringments pending.
Student: Dude, there's only 2,315 students here.
UCLA Helpdesk: Yeah that's right, the other guy doesn't have a computer.
Geez, here we go again...
In the late 70's and early 80's cassette recorders were ILLEGAL to own in america because the RIAA was convinced it would be out of business within months. Sound familiar?
Cassette recorders are legal today due to a freaking ACT OF CONGRESS because enough people wrote their legislators wondering why they couldn't make their friends mixtapes. In fact i believe it was even called the "mixtape law". (I'd like to provide a link but I'm at work and the firewalls don't like the pages that contain the relevant information)
Why is it NOBODY sees the parllel?
1) they tried to get away with something
2) we wrote our congresspeople and kept them from getting away with it
3) now they think we're all idiots and
4) are trying to get away with the same thing AGAIN
So there's your format-shifting. This law is still on the books AFAIK. Of course there's probably another one that contradicts it directly, and it's probably the DMCA.
Yet somehow, in spite of cassettes, the RIAA has managed to not only avoid bankruptcy, but make a killing while doing so. how did they do this?
Format-shifting! They shifted the format of almost everybody's music collection to CD, thus opening Pandora's box and setting the stage for the populist digital content revolution that is P2P.
Why am I, as the legal owner of a CD that I purchased from a store, not allowed to shift the format of a recording (that I OWN) while the industry is allowed to shift formats every other week? Here's the progression. 78 RPM Vinyl; 45 RPM vinyl; 33 RPM vinyl; 33/45 stereo vinyl; 33/45 quadraphonic vinyl; 1/2" stereo reel-to-reel tape; 1/4" stereo reel-to-reel tape; stereo 8-track tape; quadraphonic 8-track tape; CART; Compact Disc; Digital Audio Tape; MiniDisc; Digital Compact Casette (remember those?); Super Audio CD; Super Audio CD 24; DVD-audio. And they'd be happy to sell me the same album on every single one of these formats and wouldn't see a thing wrong with it.
But if I so much as tape John McCormick singing "when irish eyes are smiling" off my grandmother's 78 RPM record player onto an 8-track cartridge, I'm the one doing something ethically wrong?
I believe it was a Congressman who said, "I may not know what thuggery is, but I know it when I see it." But maybe he was talking about something else...
"They will get away with anything they can get away with, and they will never stop until somebody makes them stop" - Max Barry, "Jennifer Government"
They will never stop until somebody makes the
The solution requires to be implemented on the level of the clients; wrap all the TCP connections to SSL. Passive wiretaps of this kind then become useless.
I remmember at least in freshman year, I knew at least 4 people that had recieved notices in their mailboxes about how they had been busted for sharing and to stop immediately, if not their service would be disconnected. This had nothing to do with the RIAA but for violating the campus policy about doing illegal and non-educational activity over the network. I dont know why more UNI's just dont do that. This year, 2 years later, I see opinions all over our campus paper about how students are now recieving automated emails that their service will be cut, and it has. Maybe we have this implemented already and dont know it. In any case, maybe campus's should just police their own network for the sake of keeping their networks clean and to prevent bandwidth sucking from those sharing, thats why it was done here to begin with.
As a follow up, i forgot to add, a friend at another Uni had also recieved a letter telling him to report to court. When he arrived he realized they were charging him with sharing movies, of which they had a list of which they scanned their network for. They just told him to immediately remove them and all would be well. Then again maybe this was back in the more lenient days of the crackdown. He also added though that after him, a student came up who had been busted with just about every app MS makes and they were actually fining him and he could be facing jail time. It appears many uni's are handling this in their own way, no need to intervene
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.
Either that, or people will become so fed up that they remember that it is they, and not the **AA's who elect the Congress that sets the copyright terms. Can't sell your movie in a year? Oh well...public domain.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
What MPAA and RIAA should really do is write a virus or worm to work its way across the entire Internet and send them a complete file listing of every infected computer. But then claim that they were victims in this tradgedy. And then sue everyone.
MUTE has enough encryption and other fun stuff to effectively dodge this sort of thing, even if it does take a long time to download stuff (in my experience at least. This might just be because there aren't enough users, or my NAT is slowing things down). Or, if you want a more personal network, use WASTE.