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RIAA Targets LAN Filesharing at Universities
segphault writes "The RIAA has sent letters to 40 university presidents in 25 separate states informing them that students are engaging in filesharing on their campuses using the local network. Apparently, the RIAA wants to get universities to use filtering software on their networks to detect student filesharing. The RIAA did not disclose the methodology they used to determine that filesharing is occuring on those local networks, but it probably didn't involve asking permission. The article goes on to predict that the RIAA will eventually try to get the government to require use of anti-filesharing filtering technologies at universities."
1. Emule - This is one of the best we found out there. Hint (Search for server.met on google to update your server list)
2. Bearshare - Nice Gnutella client, lots of good hits
3. Limewire - Another Gnutella client. It even works on the Mac!
4. Shareaza - A beautiful Gnutella client with no spyware.
5. BitTorrent - Perfect for downloading movies, or that latest linux distro
6. KaZaa - Old favorite. Oh yea - Aussie users, you can't download - Yea Right!
7. Azureus - BitTorrent client that works on Mac, Linux, and Windows 8. Morpheus - Wow. They are still around? Wha happened!
9. Gnucleus - Open source Gnutella for you freeloading open source hippies out there - Yea I am talking about you
10. Napster - Ah, just put this one here to see if you are still reading, and I guess for shits and grins too
So there you have it folks. These are slim pickings. Get um while they still work!
but it probably didn't involve asking permission
Despite the implications of this statement, what it probably really involves is paying off a student or two to sniff out and inform on filesharing activity, either by running RIAA apps or just manual searching. It wouldn't be the first time they've used this method.
Really, what are they going to do to enforce this? It's not as if they have a way to snoop on lan traffic, and if they did it would be illegal. I know that for one, my university has a "don't know, don't want to know" attitude about filesharing, so long as you keep the traffic below about 1.5GB per day. I really don't think they have the muscle to do anything about lan sharing.
I have more than one computer on my home network and I share music between all of them. Are they going to get me too? What is the law regarding file sharing on a private network? What if my girl friend copies my music from my laptop? Is that piracy?
fuvoo: watch something
So are the universities (and all networks, by extension) supposed to sniff every packet and look for "copyrighted material" so it can take whatever action the industry think is "appropriate"?
Perhaps every car should also have a sensor to detect speeding and automatically cut the gas?
Fuck the music industry. Their ever more desperate measures only mean they are painfully aware of how irrelevant they are about to become.
I don't remember, maybe it was Einstein who said the definition of insanity was to repeatedly do something and expect a different result. Is the RIAA insane?
This is cutting their (RIAA/Entertainment industry) future profits off at the source on a number of levels.
Also, it is so problematic to try and institute filtering in an academic arena. There are probably any number of legitimate ways and reasons to see file sharing on a college campus that would not be legal outside. This will force universities to layer artificial distribution mechanisms they otherwise could have handled with firewall policies. (All this at an added expense to universities, and eventually to the cost of an education.)
So, once again the music industry goes to the "we don't know for sure, but to be safe we're going to assume you're a crook" mentality. The RIAA needs to listen to clue.mp3.
That won't work very well.
If I can get onto the same network as 10 of my buddies, chances are very high that they have stuff I want to steal.
There's no way you're going to lock down to layer 7 filtering (looking at the program data itself, very intensive to comute) at a layer 2 scope (your local IP subnet, or close enough). So you either block SMB ports (file sharing altogether, the lifeblood of a computer network with actual users), or pay $$$ to filter it, poorly.
Rumor has it that if I have my laptop at the library, and so do some other people, that we can magically create a network between us that has no juristiction by the University. Or maybe they *do*, but they have no idea about it.
Any way it gets sliced up, the dollars can't keep up with the ways to get around it.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
and demand that Congress pass a law requiring every person with a social security number to purchase 5 DRM loaded cd's per month, and staple their receipts on form 1040 come April 15th. After all, the government requires us to support the insurance companies by purchasing auto insurance. Why not entertainment too? I mean, EVERYBODY is guilty of pirating music anyway, right?
When interviewed, the majority of congressmen said point blank that person to person "dormroom" sharing of music was fair use and in no way objectionable.
.. "in the news today the RIAA demanded that automakers comply with new requirements to prevent passers by and non-drivers from "illeagally hearing" music from car stereos which "by law" is only entitled to the owner/operator of the vehicle alone."
Further, the DMCA's notice and takedown only applies to the internet, not local area networks.
Any university complying with these bs "complaints" has to have the stupidest administration ever, and any claims made by the RIAA are now utterly specious.
What next.. "illegal sharing through car radios"?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Gonzales wants to track users on the Internet for the sake of "fighting porn". This in of itself is scary because it's not difficult to imagine the potential for abuse. Now the RIAA wants to monitor college networks for "file sharing". This could easily be manipulated to filter out certain ideas and beliefs as a means to suppress freedom of speech. It could also be used to target students for their beliefs.
First of all, why is the RIAA monitoring colleges' LANs? Is that even legal? Secondly, I fileshare on my LAN all the time. The sharing of my clients' orders and bills is necessary to the survival of my business. Don't flame me for asking this because I honestly don't know the answer: does the RIAA have any authority or legal right to be monitoring students and their actions on private college's LANs? Where does the Recording Industry Association of America get off thinking that they have any authority over the sharing on local networks?
You don't get it. The whole damned point is that it shouldn't be illegal. That the law itself is immoral. Your reactions are themselves disturbing to me.
You think copyright law is immoral? Do you mean the current laws on the books, or the idea itself that people can own the rights to copy things they produce? If it's the first, I (and most here) would agree; if it's the second, you need to do a reality check. You honestly think that if I produce something, through honest means and hard work, you should be able to copy and sell it without my permission? That attitude is damn disturbing to me.
Please note that I don't believe the current system is good. Copyright lasts far too long, has become monopolized by companies like the RIAA, and definately needs an overhaul. But I believe someone who creates something should have their work protected to some degree. If I write a novel, why should anyone with a printing press be able to turn out copies unless I allow them?
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl
Most of the time when I read the modded up comments below the summaries, someone has already said everything worth saying... but for this paticular article it seems like even a lot of the the +5 comments are, well, crap.
I am a student at the University of Texas. One week ago our DC++ hub was shut down. This was unexpected and unprecedented. A few months earlier the school news paper even interviewed people with ITS who basically said they could care less about the hub. After the university received some type of a cease and desist letter, our school's ITS contacted the primary HUB admin, and long story short within less than 24 hours the hub had to shut down forever. Amoung other obscure sidenotes, they even ordered that the facebook group "Direct Connect Users Group" be deleted. My friends at Texas A&M have told me their hub is down right now too, similar story.
Both our colleges had hubs constantly sharing about 20TB of data, 24-7, with net download speeds of 1.5Mbps. Every TV show was on our hub within 4 hrs of airing. Adobe Acrobat 7 and Office 2007 were both readily avaialable before I could, not that I ever would of course, download them from private bittorrent trackers. The files were never corrupted, there was no risk of getting caught, and everything mainstream you could ever want was on the hub.
One huge appeal of the hub also was it's simplicity of use. 5GB share minimum was pretty much the only barrier to entry. I know friends who downloaded from DC++ who never heard of BitTorrents in their life, and for that matter, have asked me for help reinstalling windows. It was so simple and easy to use to the average non-geek that now that it has gone down people ask me what to do and give me blank looks.
So in response to every post about other alternatives to file sharing or otherwise really miss the significance of this, I think it is quite a significant win for RIAA.
If the RIAA wants the university to filter their network to protect their copyrights and their bottom line then they should pay the university for all of the network equipment, bandwidth, employee/consultant hours, and any other expenses necessary to conduct the filtering. The mission of any university is to provide higher education and policing the student body so that a private industry organization, which is entirely external to the mission of the university, will not suffer from potential loss of profits is NOT the responsibility of the university. The question is not whether file sharing is legal, but rather to what extent the university can be compelled to shoulder the cost of protecting the intellectual property of someone else, especially in the expensive and escalating arms race between the RIAA and the file sharers. If the university makes a good faith effort to inform students in their acceptable use policy what is and is not acceptable use and complies with reasonable and specific subpoenas (subject to reasonable charges for research, copies, and other legal expenses that any other civil plaintiff would have to pay) the I would say that they (the university) have satisfied their obligation under the law. If the RIAA et al wants more extensive monitoring then they can shell out the $100,000+ for extra servers and network monitoring gear along with the consultants to operate it all and the university employees' time (billed at least $100 per hour for interruption of normal university related duties). They cannot compel us to pay to protect THEIR property, only the government has the power to tax. Anyway, no other private business gets anywhere near the cooperation from law enforcement at the expense of the tax paying public and still they complain. The FBI should be traking down the identity thieves, terrorists, serial killers, and other really nasty criminals...not wasting their time busting copyright infringers on behalf of the entertainment industry. The RIAA should get off our campuses and they should take their craptastic "music" with them.
Copyright law hasn't existed for much of human history. If I write a novel, why should anyone with a printing press be able to turn out copies unless I allow them? - why shouldn't they? After all, they own the printing press. Copyrighted works are supposed to eventually end up in the public domain, which is where the inspiration for much new work comes from. Human culture - stories, histories, myths and art, in all their many forms - is a shared process. The artist needs the audience as much as the audience needs him. We tell ghost stories round the fire, we discuss our opinions around the watercooler, we listen, watch and read other people's stories. They enrich us. The same with scientific ideas, they are largely small increments built on the progress of those before.
Before copyright, art and written works were created, but it was expensive to make and copy, so the wealthy paid for artists to go round doing their thing, recognising the value of culture. This attitude still survives today, with corporate and foundation grants and government subsidies. Copyright was a way to increase the amount of works produced, by giving the creator a cut of the reproduction money long after the printing press was invented. It was supposed to be a trade, you get to be sole source of your work for a time, so we have more products in the public domain as a result. This was never meant to be a new form of property right, so that wealthy companies could lock up culture in digital prisons, and never release it to the public domain from which its inspiration came.
Yes, artists should be paid something - but to produce new material. The idea that culture can be parceled up into someone or some companies exclusive property, that it can restricted for hundreds of years, that artists get to make one big hit and they and their families get to live on royalty paychecks for ever-more - that's wrong. I don't get paid repeatedly for the work I've already done, why should an artist have a special right? My work is an expression of my skill and knowledge, but I only get paid the once for doing it. Why shouldn't artists? Why should my free speech in sharing what I know, what I've heard, be restricted for someone elses profit? Why shouldn't I have my fair use ability to make my own copies for my own use? At the very least, content creators should have a choice between DRM and copyright, if you use DRM, you also lose copyright protection. DRM'd works will never enter the public domain.
Now, I recognise that copyright is one way to increase the amount of culture and art, when it works (which is another question, now we have DRM). There are others, such as recurring opt-in flat fees to join broadcast streams and collections (online or in the RF spectrum) - e.g. TV licence fees or an addition to your ISPs bill. We can ask that music artists get most of their money from concerts, touring and generally performance work, rather than a tiny percent getting big bucks from exclusive CD contracts. Hell, nobody says that people can't still be a copy-provider of their own works, iTunes and bottled water shows people will pay for convenience and perceived quality.
About the only thing from copyright law I agree with is the moral rights, specifically the ability to be exclusively known as the creator of a work. Passing someone elses ideas off as your own, should still be prevented. Other than that? I see a legal fiction, a government created artificial monopoly that those who've got theirs are trying to codify into a permanent exclusive ownership on our culture that was never intended.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Ok. I am a software maker (author of a couple of open source programs). And I occasionally like hacking (sorry, cracking), especially where I can prove that Windows security is lacking... So, if caught, I'll just claim my hacks were just probes to check whether there wasn't any kiddie porn on those company networks that I "tested". After all, as a software maker, it's my RIAA-given right to probe third parties for unauthorized activity!
it's the RIAA. A dinosaur whose right to exist has expired.
In my capitalism books, what is obsolete has to vanish to the market can concentrate on material that is valuable. Now, capitalism has been turned upside down. Obsolete companies and market structures are kept artificially alive with laws.
Roll back about 100 years, when the automobile came into existance and hackney coaches became obsolete. Remember the laws that look so stupid today? The "man waving a red flag that has to walk in front of automobiles" and similar rubbish? Same shit.
What did it serve? It was annoying then, and it's something we can only shake our heads at today. Who'd come up with a STUPID law like that?
Well, now you have it all over again. Instead of traffic laws, now it's copyright laws that come up with harebrained ideas to protect a business that is essentially dead.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.