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Stanford To Charge Reconnect Fee For DMCA Notices
theantipop writes "Stanford didn't like appearing on the MPAA's list of 25 worst offenders. Last week the university issued notice of a new policy in which students are charged a reconnection fee, ranging from $100 to $1000, if they fail to respond quickly enough to a DMCA complaint. The policy is to take effect September 1 this year. As a show of 'good faith' they are graciously allowing all students to start at the $100 fee level for subsequent notices."
I mean its not like we wont have that money lying around from all the DVDs we sell, right? Right?
Just roll Stanford down in your list of preferred colleges/universities.
A university/college which gives more crap for what money bosses think than its students think is a one that is down the drain. Their reputation and quality of graduates tend to deteriorate rapidly in 5-10 years, which affects even old time graduates.
Just choose a university that cant stomach being a bitch to big buck.
Read radical news here
1
Student DMCA Complaint Policy & Reconnection Fee
May 11, 2007
Background
While file-sharing technology has revolutionized our ability to share information
with one other, its illegal use for pirating copyrighted materials is at unacceptable levels
at Stanford. On March 30, 2007 Stanford was listed as one of the Motion Picture
Association of America's top 25 worst offenders
(http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=196 9). We have also had a steep
increase in the number of piracy complaints filed against us by the Recording Industry
Association of America (RIAA).
From September 2006 - January 2007, Stanford received nearly as many Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaints as we received in the entire 2005-06
academic year. Of these complaints, 90% are directed at undergraduate and graduate
students: students who are jeopardizing the Stanford network by using it as platform to
steal songs, movies, TV shows, video games, books and software.
As of May 2007, the RIAA has identified seven Stanford network connections
that have been targeted for its "pre-litigation" notification program
(http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/022807.asp). The RIAA has said that it will
continue to send out pre-litigation notices each month.
Keeping up with the number of file-sharing complaints coming in under the
DMCA has required almost three full-time Stanford employees. It is an irresponsible
waste of Stanford's resources--your tuition dollars--to spend so much staff time
responding to copyright violations.
To defray these costs while underscoring Stanford's stance on copyright,
beginning September 1, 2007, Stanford will charge violators an Internet reconnection fee.
2
Student DMCA Policy
1st DMCA Complaint: The Information Security Office will forward a copy of the
complaint to the student, with an email instructing the student to
remove copyrighted content and respond to the Information
Security Office. A student has 48 hours to respond to the
Information Security Office (ISO) and attend to the DMCA
complaint. If the student addresses the DMCA complaint within
that time, there will be no disconnection, and no reconnection
fee. But if the student does not respond within 48 hours, the
student will be disconnected from the network. Once the DMCA
complaint has been addressed, the student will be charged $100
to be reconnected to the Stanford network.
2nd DMCA Complaint: The Information Security Office will forward a copy of the
complaint to the student and to the student's Residence Dean.
The student will be disconnected immediately from the network.
Once the DMCA complaint has been addressed, the student will
be charged $500 to be reconnected to the Stanford network.
3rd DMCA Complaint: The Information Security Office will forward a copy of the
complaint to the student. The student will be disconnected
immediately from the network. Network privileges will be
terminated. The Information Security Office will file a
complaint with Judicial Affairs for disciplinary action. New
network privileges may be granted at Stanford's discretion upon
the student agreeing to indemnify Stanford against any further
copyright violations, and paying up to $1000 to establish new
privileges.
Fees
Students may pay fees directly to the University within 30 days of the
reconnection; fees remaining unpaid after this time will be added onto monthly
University bills.
Although the purpose of these fees is to discourage piracy and compensate the
University for resources spent dealing with DMCA complaints, for the first year of the
program, the affected departments have agreed that these fees will be transferred to
ASSU's general operating budget to enhance Stanford student activities.
3
Reconnection Fee Effective Date
The imposition of the reconnection fee is the only substantial modification to
Stanford's treatment of DMCA complaints against studen
Of course, they checked to make sure the charges were real before the instituted the fines, right?
I mean, these wouldn't possibly be trumped up charges after all.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Just because Stanford's name is at risk students, who aren't guilty of a *crime* and have no way to prove their innocence, are being dropped from the campus network and having money extorted from them by the University to reconnect?
That's a bunch of horseshit. The MPAA and RIAA are winning at their game with colleges when more should be turning to the legal minds on campus to see what they can do to shut this finger pointing media game that they are playing.
At my University, they took to blocking BitTorrent traffic, and the traffic of most popular P2P apps. This was pretty effective at stopping 99.9% of students from using the aforementioned services. So, with far more effective methods of counteracting this, why resort to billing students for what may or may not be a legitimate DMCA complaint? Seems like they are just inviting **AA to abuse this.
mmm...muffins
so if someone from Stanford pisses me off i can send a fake DMCA letter and cost them $100?
sweet.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
The solution is of course to use a program like WASTE and create a small network of friends (and by friend I mean non-leech).
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
So not only is Stanford graciously enforcing the RIAA's copyrights for the RIAA, but they are also joining in on the payday for the pirates that are caught? Bad Stanford!
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
Examples?
I tend to disagree a bit here. A universities reputation is based on the quality of its research and how well it's graduates to in the work force. Research is paid for by outside companies which ARE concerned about their IP. A company will not want to be associated with a "pirate" university.
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
...they should get on TV next to Jeff Foxworthy and say "I go to Stanford, but I am NOT smarter than a 5th grader!"
Why?
It's Stanford's network; if you pirate files and violate the terms of use agreement you signed back when you activated your connection, they've got every right to kick you off the network, and every right to fine you to let you back on. And considering how important the internet is in higher education these days (almost all of my homework assignments, for example, are issued online and occasionally submitted electronically as well), I'd say that paying the fine so you've got your connection back is a pretty good idea.
Paying the fine so they can get their connection back isn't stupid. It's a necessity.
Goo goo g'joob.
Apparently, if within 48 hours of receiving the notice, the student responds to the Stanford Information Security Office and explains that he has a right to host the content, there is no disconnection and no $100 fee.
Spoken like a true Yale man
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Stanford saw the *AA making sweet money on trumped up charges and decided to cut themselves in for a share.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
You got that the other way around. Students pay tuition and other charges related to their education. The MPAA is sponsored by the extra taxes raised on empty media, 'copyright enforcement' fees and other things you'll have to pay for whenever you see any type of media.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
First, they aren't leeching from your taxes any more than you are for driving on roads in other states -- there are certain things we decided should be publicly funded due to their public benefit. Education is one of those things, and it's probably one of the most important, at least if you believe in self-governance. You may not personally think that education is a worthwhile project to fund, but many people do, and you're not going to convince them otherwise by accusing students of leeching from "your" taxes.
But beyond that, Stanford is not part of the UC system, and is not particularly publicly funded. I'm sure they get some public money, but so do many other institutes, with or without students. For example, road construction companies derive a large amount of their income from public contracts, and very few construction companies enroll non-employee students.
Does your ignorance make you a loud mouth arrogant bastard with your head up your own ass WHO LEECHES FROM MY INTERWEBS, or should I just excuse you as someone that's angry about not going to college?
A necessity? You've never wardriven a college campus, have you?
I haven't either. No need, my hallway had 4 open APs last I checked.
ResidntGeek
Why?
...
Paying the fine so they can get their connection back isn't stupid. It's a necessity.
The stupidity is in getting disconnected in the first place.
YES INDEEDY! The next presidential election will hinge heavily on the pro-student, anti-student issue. Like you I am very anti-student and hope they all go to Mexico or Canadia soon.
I like basketball!!1!
Next you wont be able to graduate unless you pay your unpaid DMCA notices.
Most schools require a zero balance to graduate.
Being denied net access is one of the principle wrongs of the right to read story. Even today, that is fatal. Witout network access, you can't register for classes. If Stanford has special policies for computers within their network which they deny to computers outside their network all of those services are denied for those "disconnected".
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I see a new western union commercial here!
kid: Mom? Dad? I need some cash, quick, before my webiste goes down.
Read it carefully - roughly, after the first notice, it's a $100 fee. After the second notice, it's $500 plus a notice to the residence dean (like a referral to the principle). After the third, it's $1000 plus a referral to Judicial Affairs (which, given Stanford's honor code, is likely to result in a suspension). The previous policy was a network disconnect until a student certifies offending material is removed, the second offense was another disconnect plus a notice to the residence dean, then after the third, referral to Judicial Affairs and a student was PERMENANTLY BANNED from the Stanford network. (Makes it quite difficult to do classwork.) I'm personally bothered with this new policy; makes it too easy for a rich kid to ignore everything.
Stanford's networking folks do look carefully at the notices, protect student privacy unless faced with a court order, and a student can contest the DMCA takedown notice without penalty with the eager assistence of Student Legal Affairs - although doing so waives your privacy. As of two years ago, no student had ever contested a notice - they were all clear-cut DMCA violations. And only well-documented violations ever got passed to students.
Now, let's be honest here ... I have yet to see a single person on Slashdot ever suggest running a file-sharing service from their desktop at work. So exactly why is a university a different story? Regardless of the merits of the DMCA itself (I personally think it's a stupid law, guilty-until-proven-innocent and with punishments far worse than the violation itself), the DMCA is still the law; why should a university be expected to shield individuals engaged in illegal behavior?
A witty [sig] proves nothing. --Voltaire
Just roll Stanford down in your list of preferred colleges/universities.
What and just let the MAFIAA have Stanford and everything it does? NFW. It is outrageous that people can be thrown off their network, fined and out of school without a trial on the word of a big dumb company that's got a reputation for suing innocent people. This needs to be fought at every level. We can't let big dumb publishers destroy public institutions over their pop proffits. Pop music and movies are not worth this. Lawrence Lessig must be furious. Do you think he's going just leave? Where will you go that can't be screwed over?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I do live in Stanford on-campus housing -- and I can assure you that every private AP within range of my MacBook is quite secure.
Why, I avoided MIT because their campus sucks. When you're going to spend 3 - 5 years of your life at college why not look at the "little things" and chose one that meshes with what you want?
Universities tend to be sluggish in the internal politics of their administrations, despite their reputation of being progressive and cutting edge. There seems to be a time lag of about ten years between the opinions of most of the students on an issue and that of the university administration. But when the administration does change, it often seems to go overly towards the opinion that the previous university administration was so against. There seems to this pattern of bonehead inertia followed by a swing too much in the other direction ten years later. I noticed this during the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s when lots of quality professors were being fired for protesting the war in its early years and then having universities go strongly anti-military in the 1970s. This pattern also showed up in the 1980s with resistance to 'political correctness' in the 1980s followed by a stiff overreaction towards PC mentality in the 1990s.
So if there is any validity to these observations, then there may be a complete change of view against the RIAA and restrictive copyrights on the part of university administrations in about ten years that will last for another twenty or so afterwards. This pattern of overreaction to extremes followed by an idealogical reversal in the other direction seems to be the general dynamic of university administrations as the younger people who suffered from their positions in the beginning take control of the administrations through the long personnel change process. Often they are the only ones interested in gaining control of universities given the tediousness of administrative processes. Revenge seems to be a good motivator and would explain this tendency to shift between extremes.
So don't worry too much about your university being a poodle to the RIAA cokeheads. It will most likely change over time. In the meantime, set up websites where you can support the fellow students who have been randomly selected for RIAA extortion.
So... you've been busily securing them, have you?
I think it's perfectly reasonable to de-rank Stanford because of this. If they're willing to harass their own students based on the whims of a private company, it's a short shot to doing more than just harass. Stanford (like others that seem to be more aware and responsible) has the clout to completely ignore the RIAA (as other universities have done), but instead it chooses to 1) harass students and 2) charge them arbitrary fees. All at the whims of a totally unrelated private company. Pretty dodgy if you ask me.
They'd probably cheer; academics tend to hate the restrictive policies of academic publishers.
Okay. Let's say you're my Stanford roommate, and I hate you because you snore loudly. All I have to do is file three DMCA complaints against you (or get a friend off campus to do so) and Stanford will zap you with $1600 of fines and you'll be brought up for disciplinary action. (Think you're gonna *want* to stick around after that?)
The policy fines students for being accused. THE KID DOESN'T HAVE TO BE GUILTY OF ANYTHING, THEY GET FINED FOR BEING ACCUSED. Do *you* want to go to a school where you're not innocent until proven guilty, you're not even guilty until proven innocent, you're just automatically and permanently guilty the moment anyone makes an accusation?
I had to write up the policy for a university dealing with the question of what to do with RIAA complaints a few years ago. In my opinion, Stanford is being *monumentally* stupid. I told the university I worked for to become an ISP and start charging students for internet access if they wanted it, and put no restrictions on that access aside from what minor restrictions an ordinary residential ISP might place. Then it would all be *their* problem, not the university's.
The reasons Stanford did this are very simple, are explained in detail by Stanford, and were entirely left out of the summary. They have to pay 3 people full time to respond to DMCA complaints, the vast majority of which are caused by students doing something wrong. The salary these three people earn would be better spent on education, and it isn't fair that the entire student body has to pay for the acts of the ones infringing. They're shifting the costs of responding to these DMCA complaints to the students who cause them.
;)
As a show of good faith, for the first year all collected money will not offset the salaries, but will in fact go directly to the student government.
To reiterate, they're just shifting the costs of responding to DMCA complaints onto the students too dumb to get their warez and MP3s from usenet like the rest of us
Do exactly this. Just go to the dorms, do a quick inventory of what the room numbers are, and send at least two notices each. You can address it to "resident" for each room number, no need to know names or anything else. Alternatively, do a ping sweep (or similar tactic) on your local network, and send notices to their office regarding all IPs you hit -- or simply make shit up, you're bound to hit one or two of the firewalled ones.
Everyone, please coordinate through Slashdot or something similar. Even do it around replies to this comment. Just make sure you aren't duplicating effort. Two is enough to force every single student you troll to be disconnected, once, and fined $100. That should be enough to cause problems for their "Information Security Office" even if the students were happy, and they should be pretty genuinely pissed off about the fines. But if you send more than that, you'll just be inconveniencing the students, not the university.
Also, $100 is really enough. They do threaten that after enough notices, they'll charge $1000, but really, every student has $100 (even if they don't want to let go of it); $1000 is starting to get serious (in case this somehow backfires). I imagine they won't be fined at all, anyway, but don't be an ass.
Now, the reasons I don't agree with this policy:
For higher education, they do sure seem stupid here...
The solution to "spending so much staff time responding to copyright violations" should be really fucking obvious: Don't spend so much staff time responding to copyright violations! Make the students sign something when they get their network access that makes the student -- not Stanford -- responsible for the copyright violation. Then make the RIAA take it to court.
(Does this work, legally? For all I know, the DMCA might have some sort of fine about not responding to copyright violation notices...)
Where'd the other 10% go, pray tell?
Where is your evidence that:
This is why you should send two to each -- to demonstrate how fucking bad this policy is. The MAFIAA has a history of suing grandmothers, 12-year-olds, and dead people, not to mention one woman who had never used a computer or the Internet in her life. Notice how I said "suing", NOT "sent takedown notices".
So, before they even get to the part where they drag you into court for something you didn't do, couldn't have done, or at the very least, their only proof is one screenshot that has your IP in it, Stanford will kick you off the network for the second notice, no matter who sent it or what you've done about the first notice. (The 48 hours only applies to that first notice.)
I'm sorry, but this is the kind of policy that would send me packing instantly. As in, bags packed, out the fucking door, get my transfer credits, drive to my parents' house, and explain that I need a new college. Whether or not I'd been doing anything illegal (which I have, by the way: I play DVDs that I own on Linux!)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
A certain Cambridge college has implemented a similar policy. The fine is a charge of 2 terms' connection fee (totalling c. £50, around $100), and disconnection for 8 weeks of term time. However, this is only after investigation (we've had two cases so far, where both students were asked if the allegations were true, and admitted it). There is no policy, as of yet, for repeat offences.
However, I don't really, in all honesty, see the issue. The charges are only imposed if the allegations are "proven" to be true. Students admit to what is a breach of the ToS for the College network, and are punished accordingly, an amount enough to discourage them from repeating said actions, but not of unreasonably great significance ($100 on top of $550 (the total network charge for the average undergrad))
I would like to add that I don't necessarily see the ToC as being "correct", given that as far as I'm aware, downloading an avi of Prison Break is about the same cost as videotaping it from freeview Sky, however, I feel that's beyond the scope of this discussion
>Q: Does it really cost $100-$1000 to update a routing table?
>A: No, of course it doesn't.
You're right. That's not what Stanford is saying. They're saying "between you, you force us to employ 3 people handling this that we wouldn't otherwise. So we're putting in a tax on the behavior that has caused us to employ them."
Don't like it? Don't steal files. Cry "but I've not been proven guilty" all you want, but the XXaa won't be sending takedown notices of your dissertation and research papers without you having baited them into it.
And responding to the DMCA takedown notice within 48 hours will keep you from being disconnected - and thus subject to the tax - in the first place. So if you ARE baiting them into papering you, keep on top of it. File a rebuttal with Stanford, documenting your copyright (or permission/license to post).
> This goes right up there with my U's $100 "administrative fee" they charge for forwarding you an email complaining about file sharing.
Same argument: a tax on the behavior that causes them to employ people to handle the results. Still, your school should have a policy of negating the "fee" if you can prove that the complaint is bogus. If they don't, YOU (a person provably interested) should talk to the administration about it.
Why, I avoided MIT because their campus sucks. When you're going to spend 3 - 5 years of your life at college why not look at the "little things" and chose one that meshes with what you want?
Your implication that 3-5 years of campus life means a hill of beans to the 50-60 years you're likely to spend afterwards suggests to me that you're a recent graduate, if even that.
Let me put it this way. Within 5 years of graduating college, you will have forgotten what it was even like. (That's especially true if you spend the entire time drunk like a lot of college kids do.) So it's a huge mistake to base your choice - which affects your entire life afterwards - on whether or not you like the campus. Ditto for DMCA policies, which are just as irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
You should be basing your college choices on three things, and only three things: a) quality of education, b) reputation in your chosen field, and c) networking opportunities. Using any other criteria is sacrificing decades of your life for a couple of good years that you will probably just forget about once you get out into the real world. The last thing you want is to be stuck in some dead-end job when you're 30, feeling like you have no future and thinking "maybe if I'd gone to a different school, I'd have a better job, more friends and more money right now..."
The good news for you is that it sounds like you may still have time to transfer to MIT. That's assuming you actually got accepted there, of course.
My school (newhaven.edu) uses the 'blackboard' system. This allows professors to make hand-outs and other documents available to everyone without wasting paper. All my professors prefer to communicate through email.
This 'reconnect' fee policy will likely be sue-worthy.
Blar.
There is more to life than better jobs, money and friends that come with the money. I went to a very demanding school and regret it. I would have been happier if Id had a life. Though having contacts is a HIGHLY important issue, and any good school should get some doors open for their students, a good professional is STILL a good professional, regardless of where he got his gegrees, Ph.Ds, etc. I have found reputation to be very deceiving. Of course you get a lot more resources in MIT; but sometimes resources are not enough. In my opinion its not a matter of campuses and whatnot, its a matter of PEOPLE. And actually enjoying what you do. P.D.: anyway, if anyone signs something and doesnt comply it, then they should NOT complain. Either you play the game by the rules, or you dont (and go make your own)
... Nerd And Good Looking: The Next Step in Evolution
Ok, I graduated 5 years ago so I have a little more perspective than you're implying. Right now I am making good money working at Booz Allen so I not exactly in a dead-end job. Granted, I am making less than 2 collage dropouts I know but they over 26 so I am fine at under 170k for now.
Anyway, the quality of education at most top tear schools is extremely over rated. Most of a schools reputation is based around the quality of students they admit not the quality of education they supply. As to networking it's more important to connect with the right type of person than people at the right school. My older sister went to Washington and Lee and avoided connecting to people with money and spent most of her time with the international students and she is making around 1/2 what I do right now. On the other hand, I got my first 2 jobs because I had good connections.
There are a lot of great schools in the US spending a lot of time ranking which is 1st though 15th is a waste of time. Back in HS most people only have a vague understanding of what they want out of life so picking the best CS school is silly when you might end up studding math and getting masters in neuroscience. I think it's most important to pick and environment and social group that you're comfortable with vs. some extremely arbitrary school rank.
PS: In 5 years people look at you funny when you include your collage GPA and in 20 years the collage you went to is little more than a foot note when compared to your work history and grad school. How far you go is more about when you decide to cost than which scool you went to.
Let me give you a huge clue: the purpose of a University is to further research in one or more disciplines. That is all. Undergraduates are there to learn the fundamentals of that field, preparing themselves to contribute after a few years. If most people leave academia after graduating, that's acceptable only because a sufficient proportion of excellent students move to the next stage.
With this in mind, there is only one question in your choice of university: Will it help me increase my skills and knowledge in my chosen discipline, so I can contribute further to it? It doesn't matter whether it's a brand name Uni or the local community college, as long as it helps you improve sufficiently: it's your brain that's going to be doing the work, your brain that can choose which challenges to face. You build a reputation in the academic community by what you write, not what people in the same dorm room as you have written.
Had you begun your post, "If your aim is to increase your salary by riding the coat tails of researchers at certain brand name Universities, getting out into the corporate world as soon as you have a piece of paper to wave about..." then I might be more inclined to agree with you. But then you're just another abortion, acceptable to academia only because not everyone who graduates is like you.
And you have as many chances in life to do that as you have half-decades. The only job that's dead-end is the one you are working on when you die.
The reputation of the institution is important, yes. But somewhere along the way someone in the administration must have lost sight of certain principles.
Piracy is wrong, and Stanford should make every effort to prevent it on their networks. I have no doubt that piracy takes place there. However a review of RIAA court cases would show that they quite often make claims they can't substantiate. In the case of Stanford and its students, where's the proof?
In essence Stanford is being asked to provide the proof. What's worse, the university is looking to make the accused students pay for the investigation before handing them over to their accusers.
I know there are legitimate uses for BitTorrent and the like, but I'd feel better if the university simply blocked its use. Make a proactive effort to prevent piracy, and let that be their defense against the RIAA and MPAA. Continue to educate the students in the issues of copyright and enforce that the same way you enforce other issues--through the student code of conduct.
I understand the need to mitigate the cost of dealing with the RIAA/MPAA. Ideally this would be done by passing the costs on to the people who illegally download copyrighted content rather than all students, which is what this policy attempts to do. That's very difficult when you can't absolutely prove who the pirates are. The RIAA and MPAA have created a climate that adds this additional overhead to the cost of running a large network, and I'm saddened to see that Stanford has decided to pay this tax.
Making deals with the RIAA/MPAA is like making deals with the devil. On the surface you may benefit but in the end you end up losing your soul.
3-5 years of life in a campus that you do not like, but in a good university can ruin/change your life fundamentally.
you are making a mistake of evaluating human beings like machines - better in environments that will bring 'optimal' results for some standard goal.
it is not as such. humans are emotionally, psychologically complex creatures.
spending 3-5 years in an environment that excites you, fires you up, is fun and fulfilling with good atmosphere and social company that SUITS oneself, and in youth years of 18-22, the "free" years, which fundamentally and finally shapes and molds one's character, outlook on life and approach to life makes great positive difference than spending 3-5 years in an environment in which you will live indifference or dislike.
the former makes one into a happy persona that will sail easily through life, the latter makes one into an automaton.
Read radical news here
They are punishing students for being ACCUSED. you dont need to be "Caught". and the accuser is riaa.
little different than spanish inquisition eh ?
Read radical news here
The first rule of usenet...
(it's oosnetyea in pig latin, isn't it?)
Which reminds me...wtf is everthing doing in boneless? Is there some inside joke I missed when I was offline in the late 90s?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Everything in balance - some people go through life always looking for the "next" thing.
They spend too much time on grades so they'll get into a good grad school
They spend too much time getting a good degree to get a career started
They spend too much time working to raise up through the company ladder
They spend too much time earning money for their retirement
And in all that, they fail to live in the moment. Those are the prime candidates for a mid-life crisis or ending up old and bitter. people that realize they're getting old and still not having a good time. Then they decide to get that sporty car, dress up like a youngster and try to score with the college coeds.
Three to five years in your prime is a long time - if you don't think you're going to have a good time it's probably not worth it. Consider it a lot like savings, on the one hand you shouldn't send yourself into endless credit card debt, but you're also not supposed to eat ramen noodles and water 24/7/365 to minimize your student loans.
Remember, your life isn't ranked at the finish line. The quality of life is the sum of all parts of your life, which of course means you shouldn't blow your future but you shouldn't ignore the present either. Of course in the short term most of have bad times and boring times from time to time. But in the long run, if you have a good life and the outlook of a decent life go for it. If that's an either/or, stop up and think again...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
did you RTFA?
on the 2nd notice, they get automatically disconnected, regardless of if they responded that the 1st one was completely bogus.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I was the syadmin at a private college for a few years, but I occasionally wore the network admin hat as well. >50% of DMCA notices we received were outright invalid. They referred to ip address that we owned which weren't even in use, "internal ip addresses" that didn't exist, etc. The majority of my time spent dealing with DMCA notices wasn't spent tracking down offenders, it was spent verifying that a given address wasn't in use, and then responding to that effect.
I concur - and have more to add. Ultimately, the college education you get starts to level out. Sure, Harvard might open some doors the first year out of college, but the 5th year out of college, everyone's going to be looking at the past five years. Is academic reputation important? Absolutely. But you know what's more important? Being in an environment where you can A) Bring your skills to the table, B) Be comfortable, C) Try out many new things without feeling threatened.
While avoiding Stanford for DMCA reasons may ultimately be a trivial reason, it does show that Stanford puts it's own interests above the education and well being of it's students. Do you really think that this place will have good academic counciling, will encourage you to study what you find interest in, etc.?
I used to work for NetQoS. I no longer do, but want to keep the excellent karma attached to this account.
Actually most people who fought the RIAA found their cases dropped... The RIAA doesn't want to risk some judge setting a precedent in the defentant's favor. For example, if someone claims they had a wide open AP and that the RIAA could not prove it was them who actually downloaded that file. Overnight everyone would run out and buy cheap linksys routers and the RIAA's game falls apart.