Slashdot Mirror
University of Wisconsin-Madison Bucks RIAA
stephencrane informs us of an interesting development at UW Madison. The school, along with many others, has been sent "settlement letters" by the RIAA with instructions to forward them to particular students (or other university community members) that the RIAA believes guilty of illegal filesharing. The letters order the assumed filesharers to identify themselves and to pay for the content they are supposed to have "pirated." The university has sent a blanket letter to all students, reiterating the school's acceptable use policies, but has refused to forward individual letters without a valid subpoena. This lawyer's blog reproduces the letter. The campus newspaper has some coverage on the university's stance.
University of wisconsin's enrolments skyrocket.
I was singing in the shower the other morning and I was greeted by a lawyer with a letter before my nipples had a chance to harden in the cold post-shower air. (In my defense I contend that I was not in violation because I don't actually know all the words and I was just singing the chorus parts that I was reasonable sure of...)
I think instead of the blanket statement that they will submit to a subpoena, they should have narrowed it to a subpoena for an alledged violator. Anything less may open the university to full access to student and campus network server logs in a driftnet subpoena. That should be fought tooth and nail.
The truth shall set you free!
In Wisconson, "UW" refers to Madison. "UW-M" usually refers to Milwaukee.
--Gus
They're not so much "Standing up to the RIAA", they're merely asking for due process in the form of a proper subpoena. The RIAA has enjoyed a remarkable level of convenience up until this point with regards to their university settlements, it will be interesting to see if they actually bother to take the time to get the required paperwork together. All of their other cases that have shown up in the media have seemed pretty slapdash, at best.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
It's good to learn they aren't totally cooperating with the RIAA. I hope other universities take this approach.
" We don't need to find the weapons of mass destruction we just need to want to find them, that's the way it works!
The University is in no way responsible for what students do on their network.. any more than a phone company is responsible for what people do with their telephones. As such, they should butt-the-fuck-out of the private matter between the student and the copyright holder.
How we know is more important than what we know.
...the RIAA can take the public for such fools.
I'm just glad they're finding it difficult fooling an institution
that encourages thought.
"Perhaps because it runs os x?"
Probably run by that idiot Mac zealot who did the pointless "hack my mac" (and DoS my employer's network in the process) contest a while ago.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
The University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee is UWM. The University of Wisconsin - Madison is UW-Madison.
The Badger Herald is an independent (not supported by the school) student newspaper on the UW-Madison campus. Since they don't get University hosting, I sincerely doubt that they spend enough money on servers/bandwidth etc. to survive a slashdotting. Don't worry. You're probably not missing much more than a rehash of the email.
These comments are pretty cheesy.
Magic Mushroom!
Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
>If students do receive a subpoena notice of being sued after being warned by the cease-and-desist letter, Rust said they will have their Internet access suspended and their names forwarded to the dean of students for an official review. So what happened to "innocent until proven guilty"? Glad I don't attend a fascist university like this one.
I didn't RTFA, but I did get a chance to RTF email!
Subject: UW-Madison copyright compliance notice
Date: 03/16/2007
The recording industry is threatening lawsuits against those who may have engaged in illegal file sharing. They are currently targeting students who live in university residence halls. Recently, UW-Madison and other universities have been notified that they will receive settlement letters that are to be passed on to the individuals whom the senders believe to be guilty of copyright infringement. Consistent with current network management procedures and our understanding of federal law, UW-Madison does not plan to forward these letters directly to campus network users. We will, of course, comply with a valid subpoena.
However, if the UW-Madison is given cause to believe that a student, faculty or staff network user may have infringed on copyrights, it will take action. University network policies empower the CIO to terminate that person's network access until the matter is resolved. The Dean of Students office (for students) or supervisors (for employees) will be notified and other disciplinary action may be taken, as appropriate.
Unauthorized peer-to-peer file sharing of copyrighted works is illegal in many circumstances, and a violation of the university's Appropriate Use Policy. Please be advised of your rights and responsibilities under these rules. For more information, see: http://www.doit.wisc.edu/security/policies/appropr iate_use.asp
Fun stuff--Pretty glad I'm out of the dorms. Maybe I'll get one of these from Charter...
doesn't Purdue just throw the letters out and not even notify the student at all?
" B uck the RIAA"
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
But there is a vastly simpler way to stand up to the RIAA on matters like this.
Erase your logs after a short period of time. Don't keep a record of what IP address was allocated to what account at any given time.
Then if the RIAA shows up, not simply with letters, but with lawsuits and court orders, you still can simply say "don't have the info."
This is what librarians do at many libraries. After you return the book, they destroy the circulation record. There is no record of what books you have read.
Yes, this means giving up using the logs for your own enforcement activities done after the fact. You can have a live database, or even keep the records for a few hours if you want to respond to problems same day. After that, no luck. But why is that so terrible? It's not like people who want to be anonymous for something truly nasty can't find an open wireless node these days. Main problem is that IT admins can't bear the thought of giving up control.
However, this would save the universities a ton of money (no need for legal department to handle requests) and it would also save the students a ton of money ($4000 per student served, $3000 with the "discount") which they could be spending on education.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
This is how it should be. No company (or school) should give out anything just because they got a letter. A court order should be the only time they give anything up. Sadly this does not seem to be the case. It must be cheaper for them to just cave to demands than fight them. Customers just dont care.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
I'm an Aussie and they all mean "some US university", so much so that I did a double-take when I read "UW Bothell" as "UW Brothel".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
As most people on this site are aware of, the RIAA has been sending letters like this to colleges all over the country for years now. I'm sure the language changes, basically trying to pry open cases that they can then use to prove that University networks are somehow responsible for the continued "piracy".
Wisconsin's response is totally in keeping with the practices of any of the major universities that have recieved such letters. And the fact that they said, "show us a court order, and we'll do it" is not "bucking" anything, unless following the law is now rebellious ("bizarro!").
It seems to me that the threat of a lawsuit unless one pays up is exactly what constitutes extortion. Anyone know of any cases where people are standing up and taking legal action against the RIAA/corporations the RIAA is representing?
We've upped our standards. Up yours.
Why does the "Spies like Us" DVD cost $16 when the VHS costs $6? Is the movie itself worth 6 or 16? Which is it?
What happened to lower prices for CD's as touted by the RIAA in the late 80s/early 90's? What occured that a medium that costs lest to produce actually increased in price?
It's too bad that the RIAA has become as greedy as they are. They have no one to blame but themselves for piracy, and nothing you can do will stop it. You can shut down P2P, and people will have LAN parties. Let me ask you this: The parties you love so much, are you paying the RIAA to play the music for a crowd? You or the host of the party should be, but just try to bring that up and see how many people want you drinking their beer. If you attend any party that isn't paying royalty for the music, you are a hypocrite. You are part of the problem, Mr. Holier than thou.
Once people pirate once, they don't think about it much the 2nd time. Make things reasonably priced, luxury or not, and I doubt people will be so willing to break the law.
I used to pirate, but now it's pointless. Most music is crap and I can just use iTunes for the 1 good song on any record. One thing you and the music industry must learn is that a song stolen does not equal a lost sale.
Well-intentioned, but ultimately VERY BAD for the "little guy'.
Think about it. Instead of giving the students who tick off the RIAA a warning, they won't tell the students anything is going on until they're subpoenaed (read: summoned to court).
God, what a stupid move. This is just going to end up depriving the RIAA's victims of any sort of advance warning. GOOD ONE, UW-M!
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
This space unintentionally left blank.
This is kinda OT (off the specific topic of this case, but not the general topic of **AA extortion), and maybe naive on my part, but I wonder how cost-effective these efforts really are. I mean, even while trying to do an end run around due process (remember when we used to have that in our legal system?), they still have to patrol the P2P nets to find infringing files, determine who is downloading them, trace IP addresses and try to match them up with individuals, determine which files on their computers correspond to specific copyrighted works, then strong-arm those individuals, etc. Has anyone done a study to determine how many man-hours (and at what cost) the RIAA expends per alleged infringer vs. how large of a "settlement" they offer? Is all of this really a major cash cow for them, or are they more interested in the deterrence factor -- i.e., knowing they will never catch all of the file sharers, or even a majority, but believing that for every nastygram they send out and every settlement they extort, they think that through publicity (press and personal word of mouth) they will "scare" X number of additional infringers into abandoning their activities?
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Having been to UW several times, Madison and UW is, and always will be one of my favorite places. It just went up a few notches. Go MADTOWN!!!!!
How cost-effective are suicide bombings?
You kill 2-5 people, you destroy maybe $3000 worth of property. One would think this is hardly worth the effort and sacrifice.
But 5 or so such bombings costed Egypt a few billion dollars in lost tourism profits.
RIAA doesn't do this to profit from the lawsuits, but to stop people from using P2P. Create enough fuss around it, make people afraid of using it, show that no matter who you are, 8yo girl, mother of 8 kids, old granny, a guy after stroke, you're not safe. They don't care that you hate them, just like you hate the terrorists. They just want to scare you.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
UW has a long history of being a center of political activism, as far back as I can remember. Some of my oldest memories are the riots in Madison protesting the Viet Nam war.
Another incident I remember is a student body president who raided the student association funds to create a life size copy of the head of the Statue of Liberty and the torch and park it out on the frozen lake one winter. Instead of getting kicked out for wasting funds, they were re-elected by a landslide and followed that trick by covering the commons with pink plastic flamingos. The details are hazy but that's mostly accurate.
This is the school that for years had the Budweiser song as the unofficial school song. They'd play that song before football games and the entire stadium would shutter from tens of thousands of people stomping their feet in time to the music and at the end yelling, "When you say Wissss-con-sin. You've said it all!"
It's the town where a man got arrested for walking naked down State Street at 2 am. In those days he would not have attracted the attention of the police even then had he not been dragging a dead muskrat at the time. The cops said they stopped to ask where he got the muskrat.
The point is if there was going to be any place that would tell the clueless mofo's at RIAA to go stuff it's little surprise it would be UW.
So do people still go to the Stone Hearth (aka The Stone Hole)? Used to listen to this really loud little band there...you may remember then as Cheap Trick.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The UW has always been keen on social issues. It's good to know they're still sticking to their guns these days. Maybe some of the other U's will step up and take notice.
(Score:5, Not Funny)
Badgers? We don't need no stinking badgers!
Sorry.
Needs a slashdotted tag, bandwidth exceeded :)
http://amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_/104-4934940-1178315 ?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=spies+like+ us
dvd 9.49, used and new from $3.00
combo, two movies, one case SLU & nothing but trouble $8.47 used from 5.72
AUDIO CD available used only, who? 2 available starting at 69.95
repro 11X17 poster, 9.99
vhs, not available new, available starting at 40 cents...
Sorry to drag messy facts into light....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Kids, when you grow up and get a job and have money, please, PLEASE don't buy any music from us. I personally know I pirated a lot of music when I was younger (er still in school..only 23 now)and before I got a nice job out of college. Now I have a job, and money and I respect the copyrights. I will not, however, buy any new stuff because it's mostly bull and the RIAA gets too big of a slice, and I do not support them because of all these hard ball tactics. But one of the first things I did was go buy every Led Zeppelin album ever made because I had all of the music just wanted to own it. Most of the time, at least in my circle of friends, if something is deserving of being purchased..it is. As it is, I RARELY if ever buy any new CD's (yes most of the music does suck) because of the way the RIAA has handeled everything. I tend to just stick with the radio now.
Then tell me this- why do CDs (not the pirated ones- real, licensed ones) cost less in China than in the States? When the same CD costs $7.50 to buy in China and $19 to buy in the US there's something wrong (I didn't want to compare Amazon to eBay China but I couldn't find any online stores for China, mainly because in China there's a little wiggle room in pricing called haggling that simply can't be done online). Now, the Chinese CDs all say "not for sale outside China"- wonder why? They want to keep Americans paying more because htey know that Americans are willing to pay more than Chinese people. Of course, I mainly buy pirated CDs because the selections of licensed CDs are limited (There's only so much Ayu I can stand).
OSx86 FTW
See this image of the prank.
For serious protest stuff, read the book Rads: The 1970 Bombing of the Army Math Research Center at the University of Wisconsin and Its Aftermath, by Tom Bates, for a detailed and evocative picture of the Vietnam protest era.
There's also a wonderful documentary about it called "The War At Home," but I'm not sure where to track it down these days.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The Onion once ran an ad pointing out the difference between the three campus newspapers through headlines:
- Badger Herald: Regents vote for student tuition increases, again.
- Daily Cardinal: Regents ram tuition increases down student throats, again.
- The Onion: Aliens impregnate Donna Shalala, again!
The Onion: your only source for news.Actually, while that "idiot" did get a public lashing, but in private nothing happened to him. Because of his knowledge he seems to have free reign to do whatever he pleases.
OK, on to totally off-topic random rambles down memory lane.
One of my early experiences at UW was walking down University Avenue on a Friday evening, past a bar, and saying to my companion "What sort of a bar is this?" At that exact instant, three students come staggering out the door, and one of them bends over and barfs right there on the sidewalk. Without missing a beat, my companion says: "That sort of a bar."
It was really amazing. You could drive around on the county highways and pass one cornfield with a sign in it saying "Re-elect Gordon Roseleip" and a few miles later pass one with a sign in it saying "Bring the troops home." (Roseleip was a colorful and very right-wing character whose campaign literature featured a Bible and a picture of a rose. He was always fulminating about the University and why professors were never in when he called them and did they work a forty-hour week and if not why not, and was particularly exercised about professors who earned more than the Governor. Best quote: "Now this professor, Har Gobind Khorana, who ever heard of him?")
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
It's called charging what the market will bear. This goes across all industries. In the US for example gas, electricty, cable, etc. all cost different things even from one town to the next.
The Recording Industry Association of America says it is targeting 68 people on University of Wisconsin System campuses for litigation over copyright infringements.
[snip]
Good Fast Cheap. Pick any two.
the alumni donations also skyrocketed.
Go Badgers!
Got any sources for that? It's completely ridiculous, but after some of the stuff they've pulled, I wouldn't put it past them.
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
Maybe the answer is to buy the Chinese CDs? That way you are buying legal copies of the CD so you are covered in that way and you don't end up giving the RIAA a lot of money.
(IANAL)
Héhé...no need to go to Home Depot! There's a plethora of alternatives on the market to exchange files in complete privacy. GigaTribe is one such solution ( http://www.gigatribe.com/ ), if everyone encrypted their exchanges, these silly, and downright harsh, lawsuits would disappear.
Pluses: No need to waste time on cases not worth a subpoena, no need to act as an intermediary, no need to provide bandwidth to students who are subpoena'd. Cheap and easy all around!
Minuses: For the student - no chance for a cheap settlement, judgment on public record which harms credit and employability.
If I were a pirate, I wouldn't necessarily be cheering this decision.
I am truly gratified by the University of Wisconsin's courageous stance against the RIAA's reign of terror. It's a pleasure to see a university standing up for its students instead of acting as a mindless enforcer for big corporations. Wisconsin is a great institution; and this is but another example of what makes it great. If I was a high school student trying to pick a college, or a parent of one, I would take heed: here is an institution that recognizes its educational mission.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
CDs finally are going down in price, exactly because of MP3 sharing and iTunes. You all can enjoy your low-quality, lossy crap... but I am reaping the benefits of it! Competition means good things for the consumer... who would have thought?
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
Hi.
;-)
Apparently you couldn't read the text on the original "test" site.
The "test" wasn't to "prove" Mac OS X was "secure". It was to quickly disprove the flurry of articles going around saying it was possible to hack any network-connected Mac in 30 minutes or less, when the original article forgot to point out that the test system in that scenario allowed ANYONE remote ssh access, and someone used a local root exploit (still a serious issue, but hardly close to the articles essentially saying any network-connected Mac OS X machine can now be easily hacked remotely, which was the implication of all of the articles covering the rapidly spreading story). That was the quickest and highest profile way to prove the stories false, and it did just that. The AP and other large outlets were looking at picking up the original false story, which would in turn have been carried by thousands of local papers and news outlets. But they didn't after they saw this "test" and its commentary.
I also said that there are serious security handling concerns on Mac OS X that need to be addressed, and that it seemed that intelligent and serious discourse on the topic of Mac OS X security is necessary, instead of sky-is-falling sensational stories every time there is any kind of security issue, real or perceived, on Mac OS X. I also said, specifically, that the test didn't really "prove" anything other than that the default configurations of apache httpd and OpenSSH as shipped by Apple on Mac OS X are at least marginally secure from a network perspective. So what does it "prove"? Nothing, except that there is no purpose to scare people into believing that any Mac OS X machine connected to any network can be hacked into at will, which was literally the main point of the article and most of the headlines coming out of the original ZDnet australia story.
Yeah, guess that makes me an "idiot Mac zealot"!
To the AC's below: I didn't stop posting on slashdot, and anyone who thinks they know the story and purports to be affiliated with UW, you're welcome to come to my office and say something to my face. Thanks.
Here is the original text of the site:
Mac OS X Security Test
Tue 7 March 2006 11:59 PM CST (8 March 2006 0559 GMT)
The testing period is now closed.
- The response has been very strong, and the test has illustrated its point.
- Traffic to the host spiked at over 30 Mbps.
- Most of the traffic, aside from casual web visitors, was web exploit scripts, ssh dictionary attacks, and scanning tools such as Nessus.
- The machine was under intermittent DoS attack. During the two brief periods of denial of service, the host remained up.
- The test machine was a Mac mini (PowerPC) running Mac OS X 10.4.5 with Security Update 2006-001, had two local accounts, and had ssh and http open with their default configurations.
- There were no successful access attempts of any kind, including during the 38 hour duration of the test period, nor have their been any claims of success. The host is still the same host and configuration used for the test.
Some snippets from 7 March 2006:
- The site received almost a half a million requests via the web.
- There were over 4000 login attempts via ssh.
- The ipfw log grew at 40MB/hour and contains 6 million events logged.
- Several social engineering attempts were received, including one purporting to be from the government of Sweden, which apparently uses GMail.
- More test results and information will be published here at a future date.
Mon 6 March 2006 10:00 AM CST
In response to the woefully misleading ZDnet article, Mac OS X hacked under 30 minutes, a Mac OS X Security Test has been launched. (Test is now concluded.)
The ZDnet article, and almost all of the coverage of it, failed to mention a very critical point: anyone who wished it
Any lawyer should be able to sue them foe each student as they have violated there right against self incrimination.
That's what I do- I live in China, after all.
OSx86 FTW
I'm a Chinese person with an American passport and spend roughly an equal amount of time in both countries, so I should know. Also, living in China, I also know that with said apple I can haggle the price down to $.75 or $.60 while in the US I get sworn at if I try. I'm seriously regretting the fact that I hold a US passport (maybe Canada or some country on the European continent) because of comments from some people (not you, though- what you said is mostly correct except that I take issue with the fact that you assume that I am not Chinese).
OSx86 FTW