University of Kansas Adopts 'One Strike' Copyright Infringement Policy

NewmanKU writes "Eric Bangeman at Ars Technica writes that the University of Kansas has adopted a new, and very strict, copyright infringement policy for the students on the residential network. The university's ResNet website states that, 'Violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is against the law. If you are caught downloading copyrighted material, you will lose your ResNet privileges forever. No second notices, no excuses, no refunds. One violation and your ResNet internet access is gone for as long as you reside on campus.' According to a KU spokesperson, KU has received 345 notices in the past year from organizations and businesses regarding complaints about copyrighted material downloading."

Comments

Due Process

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any clause to protect the due process rights of students?

Re:Due Process

[SamP2]

Tough luck pal, due process only applies in court. They'd have to follow it if they decided to sue you, throw you in jail for whatever, or something like that.

Cutting you off the campus net is an entirely private decision, no due process required by law.

Think of it like getting banned from a forum because the admin thinks you are a troll.

Re:Due Process

[Darkon]

Think of it like getting banned from a forum because the admin thinks you are a troll.

On a free forum to which you have paid nothing this makes sense, but I'd imagine the students pay some quite hefty fees to the university in the expectation of receiving full access to all services for their money.

Re:Due Process

[giorgiofr]

Sure, as agreed upon and detailed in the plethora of documents they sign - which now include this notice.

Re:Due Process

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, as agreed upon and detailed in the plethora of documents they sign - which now include this notice.

Just because you put something in your TOS does not make it legal or enforceable. IANAL, but I am an admin on a university network and we are frequently reminded that the students are paying customers with rights and as such we cannot arbitrarily ban them from using the system. Without some kind of watertight right of appeal someone probably will get caught as a false positive by this policy, sue, and win.

Re:Due Process

[The_Fire_Horse]

Think of it like getting banned from a forum because the admin thinks you are a troll.

Well, I'm posting at -1, so I hear you loud and clear (no one else will though)

Re:Due Process

[Lonewolf666]

On top of that, this rule is new. So I guess it was not in any of the TOS that have been signed so far.
Even assuming the new rules are legal, I suspect (IANAL) that they cannot be retroactively applied to existing service contracts. So the university would have to cancel the existing contracts and probably refund or wait out any pre-paid access times.

Re:Due Process

[Anonymous Coward]

"I am an admin on a university network and we are frequently reminded that the students are paying customers with rights"

You can stop right there.

YOU are a nobody. A network admin. THEY, the people who want this rule enforced, are record companies with IMMENSE capital and an army of lawyers. They can do what they please and the college "authorities" WILL obey because MONEY TALKS.

Get over it.

Re:Due Process

[Tony Hoyle]

Nearly all contracts contain wording to the effect of 'We reserve the right to make changes to this contract at any time' so yes they can make it apply retroactively.

Re:Due Process

[Durandal64]

I'm guessing that the service contracts are renewed from year to year. So they can change the terms at their leisure.

Re:Due Process

[mbulge]

The University of Kansas is a public school, which means that this is not and should not be an entirely private decision. This decision goes too far, seeing as how other Kansas schools and government facilities are not bound by the same restrictions.

Re:Due Process

[PopeRatzo]

Any guesses whether or not this new policy applies to the legacy-admit son or daughter of a wealthy alumnus donor?

Re:Due Process

[NeilTheStupidHead]

After looking at your previous comments, you deserve a -1. If someone with an axe to grind flagged you unfairly every time you made a post, then you'd have a legitmate complaint, but making inflamitory posts and getting labelled appropriately is rather reasonable I think.

Re:Due Process

[HomelessInLaJolla]

Any guesses whether or not this new policy applies to the legacy-admit son or daughter of a wealthy alumnus donor? It doesn't, or, if it does, it'll be a poster child case for some legacy-admit who decided eight months ago that they were going to transfer anyway.

This rule is only used in the (dreadful) event that one of those base middle or lower class students starts acing their wealthy legacy-admit "betters" in classes and hurts their fragile ego...

It's also a Plan B. Plan A, in the (dreadful) event that the middle or lower classes begin to produce students who perform better than their wealthy legacy-admit "betters", has always been to throw the goose-egging psycho girlfriend at the would-be usurper.

Re:Due Process

[Antony-Kyre]

In my opinion, I don't think so.

In my opinion, even if someone signs a contract stating that evidence, not a conviction, is needed to terminate a service, that doesn't necessarily mean that is lawful.

If they cut off someone's Internet access before conviction, so be it. But if they go to court and they are NOT found guilty, don't you think the school may have a lawsuit on their hands if they fail to re-enable the student's access?

Sure, I can understand temporarily suspending (or limiting bandwidth) of someone's Internet account to begin with, but after a verdict is reached, further action needs to be taken by the college. If found not guilty, the Internet access should be re-enabled fully.

Re:Due Process

[timmarhy]

actually, you can't just change a contract to anything, anytime you like.

if you could, i could change my contract with the phone company that i pay them nothing and get a free big mac with my line rental.

the changes must be "fair" remmeber that the spirit of contract law is fairness no matter what rubbish you might have heard.

Re:Due Process

[vertinox]

Cutting you off the campus net is an entirely private decision, no due process required by law.

I dunno... Let's say I have this jock room mate that I hate because he always gets the girls (and brings them to the top bunk when I'm trying to get a good nights sleep) so lets just say I theoretically put P2P software on his unpassworded computer and share out some Boy George songs.

Not only will he get booted off ResNet without recourse, but all the girls will think he's gay now when they look at his MP3 collection.

Re:Due Process

[nurb432]

It doesn't sound like it.

It sounds like a letter of *suspicion* from the industry is all it takes. I always thought 'innocent until proven guilty' was part of the rule of law here. ( yes, i realize this is civil and not criminal, but still, a simple letter 'we think user assigned to ipaddress xyz did something wrong' shouldn't be enough.

Re:Due Process

[Anonymous Coward]

If he could prove he didn't download them, they could fall under those false positives. He could sue the university, get access back and prove his heterosexuality. That would be a great after-school special.

btw Koukaku Kidoutai freaking wins

Re:Due Process

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just a first draft. The University's policy is still evolving.

Re:Due Process

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you even say that? It is so stupid to go through life acting like the upper class is so privileged and we poor lower class just get everything wrong happening to us... give me a break, have you looked round the world and seen how good our "poverty" class has it... if you don't like the rule don't go to KSU, or stop stealing. they have to enforce something or they as the owners of the network may be held responsible. In fact there is prob all ready clauses in the contract that prevent them from downloading copyrighted material...

Re:Due Process

[that this is not und]

Does the University of Kansas have a lot of legacy-admits?

Re:Due Process

[kdemetter]

Someone should set up a wireless , strong enough so the university students can use it . Don't need to do it for free , i'm sure the students would be willing to pay something for it ( probably the part they save by not using the university Internet ) . The University can't oppose that .

Re:Due Process

[Evilest Doer]

This is just a first draft. The University's policy is still evolving.

Well, this policy certainly wasn't intelligently designed.

Re:Due Process

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you put something in your TOS does not make it legal or enforceable. True, but "Don't do anything on our network that is AGAINST THE LAW or you will be banned" is just the kinda of condition that is entirely enforceable. Don't like it? Then work to get the law changed, because there is nothing wrong with a university demanding you dont break the law with their network.

Re:Due Process

[Jerry Beasters]

Completely untrue. At a public school there is a requirement that students MUST be given due process rights just as with any other public institution.

Re:Due Process

[ShieldW0lf]

Clearly, this is a great place to begin a multi-year commitment towards higher education.

They clearly place the interests of their customers first and foremost.

I'm going to send that university a letter telling them I'm not hiring any of their graduates because of their asinine behavior.

Re:Due Process

[The Only Druid]

Incorrect. When State actors (such as the University of Kansas, which is an aspect of the Kansas state government) acts to deprive you of rights, they must respect substantive due process (as opposed to procedural due process, which refers to the need for hearings, etc.). Substantive Due Process essentially protects against arbitrary government action.

However, the students are not a member of any protected class, and this behavior doesn't implicate any protected rights (e.g. religion). As such, its almost certainly true that Kansas need only show a rational relationship between its chosen process and the goals to be accomplished.

Re:Due Process

[The Only Druid]

Wrong. If a contract contains a clause that reserves the right to modify without re-consent, its entirely possible for that clause (and thus the modifications) to be enforceable (depending on which state you're in). There is absolutely no such thing as a requirement that modifications be "fair": the fact that unconscionable clauses are invalid has nothing to do with fairness at all. The courts simply will not engage in debates about 'fairness' of the sort you're suggesting.

We'd have to look carefully at the U.Kansas TOS before making any such conclusions here.

Re:Due Process

[MysteriousPreacher]

I think that'll be the same situation you would be in if I borrowed your car, enaged in a few police chases and drove through a house before parking it outside your house, leaving you to take the blame. It's not going to be much fun and probably difficult for either of you to prove your innocence unless you have an alibi or amazing character references.

Re:Due Process

[The Only Druid]

"If they cut off someone's Internet access before conviction, so be it. But if they go to court and they are NOT found guilty, don't you think the school may have a lawsuit on their hands if they fail to re-enable the student's access?"

Answer: no, not at all. The standards required for civil actions are uniformly less stringent than for criminal. For example, it is far more difficult to have Person A convicted of murdering Person B, than it is to show that A probably caused B's death and thus shouldn't inherit under B's will.

Moreover, the civil lawsuit by a copyright owner against a file-sharer simply will not involve a "not guilty" determination: this isn't a crime, it's a civil tort. The court will only determine liability, and so even if it finds no liability it will not definitely include any statement of innocence.

Re:Due Process

[Anonymous Coward]

> ...expectation of receiving full access to all services for their money.

The issue isn't "full access". The issue is "terms of use". Comply with the terms of use as set by the University and you can have all the access you want. Fail to comply with those terms and be prepared to suffer the consequences. End of discussion.

Re:Due Process

[I'm Don Giovanni]

The rule is new, but it's summertime. Students will be well aware of this rule before paying tuition for the fall term, so you can thow that excuse out. It was smart of KU to announce this policy during the summer, when only those few students taking summer classes will be able to use the "you changed the rules after I paid" excuse.

We've seen articles like this on slashdot regading Stanford, U. of Washington, etc (those KU's looks to be the harshest), and slashdotters say, "boycott the school, attend colleget elsewhere; that'll teach them a lesson when their enrollment plummets!!". The fact is, colleges are tired of students using the college network (paid for by tax payers, in the case of public schools) for piracy by spoiled brats. Then risk of enrollment decrease is insignificant (and those that think otherwise are living in a fantasy land).

Re:Due Process

[WingedEarth]

And what about fair use and implied licenses? Every time you open a webpage you're downloading copyrighted material. Does that mean simply connecting to the World Wide Web would cause students to lose their privileges? And if its based on "infringement," who exactly is deciding what an infringement is? I hope high school students evaluating the University of Kansas as a choice of college will think about their awful policy of trying to protect corporate interests rather than protecting their own students.

Re:Due Process

[Khaed]

So you're planning on punishing the students for the University being dicks?

Seems like you're just adding to the pile of crap the students have to put up with.

Re:Due Process

[FritzTheCat1030]

On a free forum to which you have paid nothing this makes sense, but I'd imagine the students pay some quite hefty fees to the university in the expectation of receiving full access to all services for their money. Not to mention that as a public university, much of their funding comes at taxpayer expense.

Re:Due Process

[TechForensics]

The students would have to sue, most likely in Federal Court, to assert their due process rights. None of them will be able to afford this.

Re:Due Process

[mdmkolbe]

I am a recent graduate of KU. They pay around $75 or $150 per semester for the network connection. (I don't remember the exact figure.) Far worse than the money is that if you live in the dorms, there are no other Internet options. (Well maybe dial-up, but you roommates wouldn't be to happy about you tying up the phone.)

This is just the latest in ResNet's abuse of students. They have consistently treated students as either the enemy to be assaulted or their employee to be ordered around. They have yet to learn that students are their customers.

They've blocked outgoing port 25. They say it is intended to block spam, but it prevented me from using my departmental or work e-mail accounts. They won't let you on the network unless you run their setup program that fiddles with who knows what configurations in your system (unless I can look at the source it is a security risk). Finish that all up with a little bit of traffic shaping and we have a monopoly abusing it's powers. They claim all these are necessary, but their ISP friends in the real seem to manage without such draconian measures.

I love the school and the campus, but I'm glad I don't have to deal with ResNet any more.

Re:Due Process

[shark72]

Take a look at the policy itself -- it expressly refers to DMCA violations. This and a bit of common sense should make it clear that they are not attempting to prevent students from surfing the Web.

Re:Due Process

[Anonymous Coward]

You're retarded. That's like saying "restrict your freedoms as the government requires, then you can have all the freedom you want."

Since you're retarded, I feel I must point out: I am not drawing a direct parallel between this situation and that made-up quote above. Don't attack me for saying this is a freedom issue, as I said no such thing.

Re:Due Process

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it'll piss off the students enough that they might take action against the university.

Re:Due Process

[vux984]

True, but "Don't do anything on our network that is AGAINST THE LAW or you will be banned" is just the kinda of condition that is entirely enforceable.

The issue at hand though is what happens when INNOCENT people are banned, you know people who in fact did not do anything "AGAINST THE LAW", but who got banned anyway, because they were misidentified, or because someone claimed the work they downloaded was copyprotected, but in fact it wasn't. (This sort of abuse happens ALL THE TIME.)

The question is: What is their recourse?

Re:Due Process

[Antony-Kyre]

If someone goes to civil court, and is found "not liable", wouldn't the defendant be able to bring action against the plantiff for termination of services?

Re:Due Process

[sumdumass]

The university has to show it's students that they can graduate with a chance of getting a job. Schools, public and private, higher and lower have been molding the students for ages to be employable. It is what they do.

When Kansas thinks their students won't be hire-able, they will change their policy because students won't show up to a school that will leave them unemployed. Probably, the state will step in before it goes that far, I don't know.

Could you imagine the discrimination lawsuit that would happen over this,

Plaintif: Your honor, they passed my application over because I am both female and black, and gave the job to some under qualified white boy who went to community college.
Thedefense: That isn't it at all your honor, we passed her application over because she went to Kansas state and we disagree with the policies of that school, how they treat their student and what they are teaching their students.
The judge: Case dismissed.

Re:Due Process

[sumdumass]

Unfortunately, you bring up a good or decent point as well as make the wrong conclusions.

What is to stop false copyright claims and setups like this from taking someone net access away?

As for the boy George, At best your going to get the girls to think he is bisexual. Girls talk about being pulled into the top bunk of the dorm while the roommate was trying to sleep below. Hell, they talk even when your not in the room. Have you ever noticed that when your bagging a girl, more girls look your way as if you could bag them too? It isn't her sex juice clinging to your privates, it is her mouth talking about it to all her friends who in turn talk about it to others. Some girls have bigger mouths then others and some lie about it because they don't want to be seen with a boring sex life or having something wrong with herself after someone else talked about how great he was.

So at best, they would think he was bi sexual which in itself might be a turn on for some girls. There is nothing that will get you laid more then a couple girls talking about how great you were. Once that's out, there is little outside a disease or dismemberment that will stop you from getting laid unless the truth turns the good in bed rumor into a lie.

Re:Due Process

[Fulcrum of Evil]

If a contract contains a clause that reserves the right to modify without re-consent, its entirely possible for that clause to be enforceable.

These are likely unnegitated contracts; while this sort of thing would almost certainly fly with a negotiated contract (because only an idiot would allow it when negotiating), there are porbably more restrictions on these sorts of contracts. Anyway, maybe it's the Kansas post secondary system that's set for a mass exodus of students. High school was so last year.

Re:Due Process

[init100]

The interesting question then becomes: What will the university accept as proof that a student violated copyright law? A letter from the RIAA? A lawsuit? Or a judgement against the student? In my opinion, only the last one should count. And even that isn't as clear-cut as it seems to be, as the student could still appeal to a higher court.

Re:Due Process

[vk2]

I am guessing that you are not yet preached by your legal team. Its still a discrimination unless you have sufficient proof to support that the job requires additional education not covered in the UofK; in that case you need to clearly advertise that UofK pass out need not apply. You can always not hire a UofK pass out by just saying - more qualified candidate filled the job.

Re:Due Process

[Travelsonic]

prob all ready clauses in the contract that prevent them from downloading copyrighted material...

Only illegally obtained copyrighted material, you mean? I'd sure hate to get in trouble for downloading copyrighted stuff that is legally free/available...

HINT:Generalizations = fail

Re:Due Process

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any clause to protect the due process rights of students?

Nope -- they don't want it to look too much like their three-strike policy on rape.

Re:Due Process

[xenocide2]

It's KU, not Ivy league we're talking about. You don't need to be a weathly donor to get your kid into KU. In fact, if your kid can't get into KU you should probably be worried about whether they'll live to the age of 25.

Re:Due Process

[Detritus]

It can also apply to government departments and agencies. Something to consider when discussing public universities.

Re:Due Process

[amber_of_luxor]

it expressly refers to DMCA violations. This and a bit of common sense should make it clear that they are not attempting to prevent students from surfing the Web.

You obviously haven't had to deal with DMCA claims. Common Sense and the DMCA are mutually exclusive concepts.

Amber

Re:Due Process

[PopeRatzo]

Actually, KU would have a fair number of legacy admits. There are kids who are such losers they couldn't get into a decent school on their own if their life depended on it. How do you think our president got into Yale?

Look it up.

Re:Due Process

[The Only Druid]

Plain and simple: almost definitely not, unless the contract provided for it.

Usually, these services have contractual provisions to boot the users for any reason the admins want.

Re:Due Process

[KarmaMB84]

The RIAA used to send notices alleging infringement if the names of files looked *similar* to artist names or song names. There have been *professors* bitten when their name was *similar* to an artist's when they had recorded lectures posted in mp3 format.

Re:Due Process

[sumdumass]

The candidate is always more qualified. It just might not be the level of schooling that makes them qualified. In the example I gave, the morals and ethics the school taught and how they taught the students it was proper to treat people under their control was insufficient or improper for the job I offer and where the other guy prevailed.

In this case, the education of stopping an activity in favor of just a claim and showing the students that this behavior is acceptable isn't the same values of ethics I want working at my firm. If everyone at my firm has a change to defend their actions first, this type of learning would clash with the system in place. Before you know it Unions would be there and they would be driving me out of business just like with every other company going overseas to escape.

Ok, maybe not unions but it wouldn't be run like I wanted it to be run. And what the owners want is more important then where someone got educated at.

Re:Due Process

[Rakarra]

Come now, these are university students we're talking about here. What are the chances of targeting the two of three kids that didn't break copyright by downloading music?

Re:Due Process

[ect5150]

This is like saying if I pay for a membership at a local gun club and use those resources to break some law, I should be able to keep my membership. Granted, downloading isn't the same has assault with a gun, or shooting someone, but breaking the law is the breaking the law. Why would you expect the University to consider letting students use THEIR network after the students have been shown they've used it improperly against their wishes? Just paying for something doesn't give you exclusive rights to do anything you wish with anything.

Re:Due Process

[Anonymous Coward]

"paid for by tax payers, in the case of public schools"

I didn't realize tuition was free.

No seriously, I wonder why copyright infringement was singled out. If you park illegally on campus, do they remove your parking privileges forever? If you take more than your fair share in the dorm cafeteria, can you no longer eat on campus?

Sounds just alleging copyright violations at KU carries one of the harshest penalties. I wonder if you don't properly attribute your sources in a paper if they break your fingers? Anyway, if I was on the internet at KU, I'd try to encrypt all my traffic. Some idiotic letter comes from an RIAA lawyer, and the next thing you know, you might as well leave school.

Re:Due Process

[Anonymous Coward]

You sure like living up to your nickname, huh?

Re:Due Process

[infonography]

It can't last. Not only is it a Lawsuit waiting to happen. It also will have a dramatically effect negatively on admissions. Refund demands will also roll in as current students revolt and transfer to other states under these draconian and very Kansas style rules. The reputation of Education in Kansas has taken a beating in the last few years due to bible-humping loonies already. The School year starts in just two months. Time enough for major switches in enrollment out of Kansas. Unlike K-12 schooling College students can freely jump out of a bad system.

Re:Due Process

[Anonymous Coward]

And your point is what?

Re:Due Process

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a bad example because I am a troll.

Re:Due Process

[sowth]

That sounds like a blank contract to me. Last time I checked they were illegal. Then again maybe it's not in your jurisdiction.

Re:Due Process

[The Only Druid]

Well, I can only speak for sure about (a) Federal, (b) Common-law and (c) Florida, but while it's true in all three that blank contracts are void (not illegal, the distinction is important), it is not true that unilateral modifications are invalid in all cases.

In general, you're required to provide consideration (a term of art, meaning exchanged benefit/burden in some jurisdictions, but meaning either benefit OR burden in other jurisdictions) for modifications. However, it is permissible in general to allow the other party to modify the contract at some point in the future, within limits. It's a very difficult point to litigate (and I'm not familiar with a robust rule on the issue), and its dealt with on a case-by-case analysis.

As far as service contracts like this are concerned - and this is the same for cell phone companies, DSL, etc. - usually the clause looks like this: "service provider can modify the contract at any time, but such modifications will allow the user a window of [x] days to cancel their contract without penalty".

In other words, the service provider gets affirmation by each user when those users choose to not leave the service upon notice of the modification. This option to cancel early - i.e. to avoid liability for breach - is itself consideration, thus making the modification valid.

Re:Due Process

[Anonymous Coward]

Becides, do you really think that a signifigant amount of potential students consider the copyright policies when deciding what school to attend? I'd bet many dont even consider the alcholol policy, and that is a policy that is much more likely to affect the stereotypical incoming freshmen.

Re:Due Process

[Anonymous Coward]

You honestly think that the university will care about who will hire their graduates? I'm sure that the graduates will care, but the unversity sure as hell won't.

The only exception is if the graduates are hired by some big name company which can be used as good PR for potential students and investors. Of course, if said big company stops hiring them, then the university will siently stop bragging, hoping that no one will be any the wiser.

Re:Due Process

[Anonymous Coward]

So the job qualifications are otherwise met but the graduate is not hired explicitly because of the school he or she went to. That sounds like discrimination to me.

Of course, that may or may not hold up in court, seeing as it is not the same type of discrimination as that based on gender or race.

Re:Due Process

[loraksus]

Although I don't want to sound glib, we are talking about the University of Kansas.
Not exactly MIT if you know what I mean...

Re:Due Process

[loraksus]

I'm sure the school will make an effort to notify future students ahead of time.
On the other hand, a one strike policy is trivially easy to abuse. It takes only a few people to send out a few dmca letters each and have the entire residential network shut down.
Oh... and "tax payers" is one word, you fuckwad.

Re:Due Process

[rastoboy29]

I would have to disagree. People can't just go around willy nilly denying rights to their paying customers, which students still are. There has to be, you know, a reason. And a "single strike" cannot be a valid reason unless there is very strong evidence of guilt, which implies the need for some sort of due process.

Re:Due Process

[rtb61]

Well based upon the legal quality of the notice you certainly would not want to hire any law students from that particular university, oh my, talk about a bunch of buffoons, a bunch of morons, a bunch of idiots - "If you are caught downloading copyrighted material" - so if you use itunes or direct to drive or any of the other plethora (that word will definitely confuse those pitiful beggars at Kansa U) of legal Internet services they will kick you off their network. Hell, all web pages are protected by copyright, so in Kansas U if you download a copyrighted web page they will kick you off their ResNet, based upon that condition you are better off with out a Kansas U ResNet account. Now if the Kansas U Resnet home page is copyrighted, does that mean they will kick you off 'forever' even before you can join (I love that 'forever' bit, literally speaking 'forever' means that will go back in time to enforce that particular condition).

Re:Due Process

[instarx]

From Wikipedia: due process (more fully due process of law) is the principle that the government must respect all of a person's legal rights instead of just some or most of those legal rights when the government deprives a person of life, liberty, or property.

U of Kansas is a STATE school, and is therefore part of the government. I'm also pretty sure that access to thenetwork paid for through tuition would be considered leased "property". As a result, the banned student DOES have acces to the full due process of law to appeal the decision. If U of K were a private school due process would not be applicable, although it would be moot since the student could not be prohibited from suing if he felt he was being unfairly deprived of a paid service.

Re:Due Process

[WingedEarth]

The point is that the school's policy is so overbroad that it would prevent surfing, so long as someone wrote a cease and desist letter about it.

Re:Due Process

[Anonymous Coward]

You are on to something. Punish the students even more! That will solve the problem.

I am a student at KU and agree with you that its bullshit that the administration is giving in to the M.A.F.I.A.A. like this, but your comment makes no sense. However, I really do not care if you do not want to hire me since you are willing to make such arbitrary and irrational statements. It is just like saying you won't hire a Kansas K-12 graduate because of our state Board of Education's asinine behavior (to use your phrasing) in recent years.

Here is a better solution:
This was clearly caused by behind-the-scenes legal threats from various IP owners (I think you can guess who). Just boycott (or continue to boycott, in my case) the crap that they sell until they get hit so hard financially that they realize that fucking over the public is not a good marketing strategy.

Re:Due Process

[Antony-Kyre]

That doesn't mean it is necessarily lawful. I would love to see people constantly challenging contracts that are "unlawful".

Re:Due Process

[Guppy06]

"Cutting you off the campus net is an entirely private decision"

By a public, state-funded institution?

Re:Due Process

[volpe]

I'm going to send that university a letter telling them I'm not hiring any of their graduates because of their asinine behavior.

Fight fire with fire, I always say.

Re:Due Process

[vuffi_raa]

what if it was a gay roommate irritating you because he was bringing home boys and keeping you up all night?

Re:Due Process

[Meski]

Discriminate: marked by the ability to see or make fine distinctions; "discriminate judgments"; "discriminate people"
So, discrimination as such is not a bad thing. It's the grounds you use to discriminate that are. Sex, race, etc. IANAL, but it probably is not illegal to discriminate on the basis of a educational institution's policies.

Re:Due Process

[SillySlashdotName]

Your comment makes sence if you assume the student pays a set fee for his/her education and everything is included in that fee.

I have never seen that to be the case.

You pay a set fee (tution) which is taxpayer assisted.

You want to live in the dorms? Tha is extra - and not taxpayer funded. You have no say in how much is charged, or what is included.

You want to eat in the cafeteria? That is extra - and not taxpayer funded. You have no say in meal selections, how late the cafeteria is open, or the ability to order off the set menu.

You want to wash your cloths? That is extra - and not taxpayer funded. You have no say in the fee charged, or the availability of machines, or maintenance schedules.

You want the in-dorm intranet access? That is extra - and not taxpayer funded. You have no say in services offered, prices set for service levels, restrictions, etc.

Students have choices. Buy the meal plans, buy meals one at a time, or don't eat in the cafeteria. Wash your clothes in the laundry facilities available on campus, or take them to a laundry off-campus, or take them home and have mom do them, or wear them until they stink then throw them out and buy new ones. Subscribe to the resident internet connection or use the computers at the library, or go off campus. Living around KU, I know there are quite a few wireless 'hot spots' off campus. Not as convenient as having access in your room, but convenience is not a right, and it is not included in your tution, and it is not funded by taxpayers.

Oh crap...

[FrostedWheat]

From the universities page: (which I downloaded into my browser...)

If you are caught downloading copyrighted material, you will lose your ResNet privileges forever

And further down, on the same page! (Which my browser downloaded, remember)...

Copyright © 2005 by the University of Kansas

Wow, that is harsh! I guess that's me banned then :-)

Re:Oh crap...

[NickFortune]

Yep. In fact, as a signatory to the Berne Convention, in the US copyright exists in every work not explicitly released into the publci domain. Which makes it a particularly stupid thing to say. I mean it is fairly obvious that they mean "no unauthorised downloading of copyright material", but if they really plan to implement a "no excuses, no appeal" policy, you'd think they'd take the 30 seconds or so it needed to phrase the thing correctly.

Even then, it's still way OTT. Half the papers on Citeseer (for instance) are there in technical violation of the copyright of the journals where they were first published. The journals turn a blind eye, which is why the site can keep on, but I can see a lot of sudents getting banned, which considering how widely used citeseer is as an academic resource, is a but ridiculous.

I suppose the only other way they could implement the policy as expressed is to rely on the word "caught". That way, if they don't look for downloaders, they don't find them, and selective enforcement becomes the order of the day. I suppose it might be useful if the they forsee needing a pretext to silence unruly students.

Re:Oh crap...

[Anonymous Coward]

Things like this remind me of places(net cafes I think) that offer web browsing but say "no file downloading".

Aren't you downloading the page (and images, and style sheets, and flash, and ....) to display it?

And most pages are likely copyrighted... (I think all US residents whose page doesn't say otherwise I believe it is copyrighted 75(95?) years post death, no registration required, no marks, anything, although I am not sure about the markings, I am sure on the no registration, consult local lawyer to see what is correct).

Hmm, combine this with someone else's comment about people you don't like. Just put up a web server, convince people on the network to view it, and then complain to the administration that the following people violated your copyright by viewing your page.
Although I am not exactly sure you could do to make sure the school actually enforces what they say.

Re:Oh crap...

[Karellen]

No, someone isn't violating copyright by viewing your page, but the rule doesn't talk about *violating* copyright, it talks about *downloading copyrighted materials*.

*All* works, unless they carry a notice explicitly putting them into the public domain, are automatically copyrighted by the author[0]. They do not need a copyright notice for them to be copyrighted.

Now, as the author, you may make your work (web page) available for people to download for free; that is your right. And because you, as the copyright holder, are the one who has made the work available, the end users aren't breaking copyright by downloading it.

*However*, they are still *downloading copyrighted materials*. They may be doing so legally, but that is not what the rule cares about. The rule states that merely downloading copyrighted materials is grounds for account termination.

[0] Or, if it is a work-for-hire or similar, the work might be copyrighted by an entity other than the author. But it is still copyrighted.

Re:Oh crap...

[hpavc]

I'll be waiting at the staff copier pool, ready to remove the violators.

Re:Oh crap...

[NeilTheStupidHead]

They may be doing so legally, but that is not what the rule cares about. Then that is what the rule should have said.

I'm not saying I disagree with you, the intent of the rule is quite clear, but (un)intentional poor wording can lead to a big mess later on if someone decides it means something different than the authors thought it did.

Re:Oh crap...

[Megane]

No, someone isn't violating copyright by viewing your page, but the rule doesn't talk about *violating* copyright, it talks about *downloading copyrighted materials*.

Linux is copyrighted too. NO UNBUNTU FOR YOU!

Re:Oh crap...

[Oligonicella]

Wrong, wrong, wrong. You cannot take your own copyrighted material, place it in a public forum for public viewing and then claim copyright infringement when viewed. Well, you can claim it, but it will be a false charge. In fact, because you went out of your way to "convince people on the network to view it", you would be enacting entrapment.

If, however, someone then uses said material in a copyright violating manner, you could.

Yes. Consult a lawyer.

Re:Oh crap...

[WedgeTalon]

But see, the thing is, with legal stuff, it isn't about what the INTENT is, it is about what the letter of the law says. So if a law says "no copyrighted material" then it means none, period.

Re:Oh crap...

[dal20402]

That is a gross oversimplification. Especially where (as in this case) a rule is vague and open to multiple interpretations, the intent of the rule is very often considered when the rule is interpreted.

Re:Oh crap...

[cpt kangarooski]

Yep. In fact, as a signatory to the Berne Convention, in the US copyright exists in every work not explicitly released into the publci domain.

No, not quite. Some works are old enough that they are in the public domain, either because they predate copyright altogether, or were uncopyrightable at the time they were created and have remained uncopyrighted, or were copyrightable but were not, in fact, copyrighted in the appropriate window for doing so. Some works are uncopyrightable even now, either in whole or in part (for example, the parts of the story of a Disney cartoon which are the same as a public domain fairy tale are in the public domain; you could copy them (and nothing more) from the Disney movie directly). Works made by the federal government are in the public domain (with rare exceptions). A very few foreign works are in the public domain because the US still doesn't unilaterally offer national treatment (which is a better idea than these idiotic treaties). And, of course, copyright is limited in scope; it doesn't apply to works as a whole, but rather to certain types of actions in regard to works. Making a copy of a copyrighted work is (generally) not allowed, but merely reading it without making a copy (not possible on a computer, however) is allowed. Copyright exists as to the former, but stops short of the latter.

Which makes it a particularly stupid thing to say. I mean it is fairly obvious that they mean "no unauthorised downloading of copyright material", but if they really plan to implement a "no excuses, no appeal" policy, you'd think they'd take the 30 seconds or so it needed to phrase the thing correctly.

No, some unauthorized downloading is nevertheless lawful. It would be better to say 'no unlawful downloading of copyrighted works' which would permit people to use works in ways that the way permits even though it might be against the wishes of the copyright holder.

Re:Oh crap...

[An Onerous Coward]

On the upside, this means that anyone who owns a website can search their logs for University of Kansas IP addresses, and send notices warning that students are violating their rules.

Signal? Meet noise. Noise, this is signal. You two become good friends.

Lack of Caring

[Bios_Hakr]

If the students care enough, they will all cancel their accounts. When the University sees a drop in revenue, they will have to decide.

Pulling authoritarian crap like this in a place where people are naturally rebelling against everything and anything is a good way to get egg on your face.

Re:Lack of Caring

[neoform]

Nah, students wont cancel the accounts because they need them, instead what needs to be done is someone file copyright infringement claims against *every* student, and since this rule applies to claims and convictions they will all be required to lose their accounts.. showing how stupid this sort of rule is.

Re:Lack of Caring

[OverlordQ]

If the students care enough, they will all cancel their accounts. When the University sees a drop in revenue, they will have to decide.

Pulling authoritarian crap like this in a place where people are naturally rebelling against everything and anything is a good way to get egg on your face.

You know a better solution? Don't download copywritten material.

Re:Lack of Caring

[iluvcapra]

Everybody who buys a "class notes" book from the bookstore should write down the publisher of every work copied in the books, and confirm that the school indeed obtained permission from the publisher to make the copies, as well as noting how many people are in the class to see how many copies were made. Ditto all class handouts.

Re:Lack of Caring

[Zironic]

If you check the wording properly you'll notice a rather large problem. Almost every web page you visit has copyrighted material in it that you automatically download just by visiting the site. So by definition what you're saying is basically "Don't use the Internet".

Downloading copyrighted material is perfectly legal, it's distributing it without permission is what is illegal. The DMCA have made matters rather odd over there in the U.S though. I'm glad I live here in Sweden where I don't have to worry about that crap.

Re:Lack of Caring

[OverlordQ]

If you check the wording properly you'll notice a rather large problem. Almost every web page you visit has copyrighted material in it that you automatically download just by visiting the site. So by definition what you're saying is basically "Don't use the Internet".

This is typical slashdot behavior. Take everything out of context so everybody can get riled up about it. Sure the front page says 'copyrighted material', you think they'd put the full legalese on the frontpage or just a blurb saying "Its Bad, mkay"?

But if anybody would take the time to actually *READ* the subject at hand, you would find this paragraph:

If the University of Kansas receives notice of a copyright violation (downloading or uploading copyrighted material including music, movies, games, software, etc.) tied to the IP address registered in your name, you will receive an email and written notice that your access to the ResNet Network has been temporarily suspended for 5 business days, during which time you may appeal if you believe the copyright infringement notice was received in error. You have 5 business days from the date of notice to provide written documentation supporting your appeal to the Office of the Vice Provost for Student Success, describing the nature of the error. If your appeal is denied, your ResNet service will be permanently deactivated for the remainder of the time you live in KU's residential housing facilities. The ResNet fee is primarily a connection fee and not a usage fee. If your service is permanently terminated, there will be no subsequent refund of the ResNet activation fee, regardless of when the violation occurred.

And even if you fail your appeal, you just lose your ResNet access, you can still use computer labs on campus.

Re:Lack of Caring

[dondelelcaro]

Everybody who buys a "class notes" book from the bookstore should write down the publisher of every work copied in the books, and confirm that the school indeed obtained permission from the publisher to make the copies, as well as noting how many people are in the class to see how many copies were made.

At least at my university, the need to obtain permission and license the copyrighted works appropriately is one of the reasons why course readers can be so unbelievably expensive. [I've seen 200 page readers which cost $40.00, purely because of the copyrighted content contained within them. (They're found sitting next to some of the $8.00 readers of equivalent length which contains stuff written by the instructors of the course.)]

Re:Lack of Caring

[Anonymous Coward]

You go to UCR? I am so sorry.

So very, very sorry.

Re:Lack of Caring

[Ash Vince]

I think the slashdot needs similar policy to the uni of kansas:

One stupid moderation of a valid point gets your moderation privelidges removed forever.

But lets face it, if you were too stupid to make a valid poitn wouldnt you just hide behind the moderation system by using it to disagree with other people too?

Re:Lack of Caring

[Volante3192]

Ahh yes, because somewhere along the line "guilty until proven innocent" became the de facto standard.

We get riled up because of all the kneejerk reactions that create more problems than they solve. Sure, it might superficially seem ok, but the potential for abuse is so high, it's patently absurd.

Re:Lack of Caring

[Anonymous Coward]

It's tied with the University of Kansas at number 88 in US News rankings. It's also located near both LA and OC. Nothing to brag about, but nothing to be sorry about.

Re:Lack of Caring

[Anonymous Coward]

"If the students care enough, they will all cancel their accounts. When the University sees a drop in revenue, they will have to decide."

You wish. Students NEED those accounts and the "drop in revenue" is NOTHING compared to what record companies may sue for.

Instead the students will behave. If they're in University, it's because they don't want to be burger flippers or janitors. Their future is at stake. They will suck it down and deal with it.

Corporate America has them by the balls.

Re:Lack of Caring

[Bios_Hakr]

First off, downloading is not illegal. Uploading is the problem.

Second, not everyone who was charged actually shared copyrighted content. There have been several cases where people were charged and didn't even have an internet connection.

Re:Lack of Caring

[Anonymous Coward]

>One stupid moderation of a valid point gets your moderation privelidges removed forever.

I'd like to see this take one step further: Being stupid in general should be a cause to have one's Slashdot account revoked forever.

So, for example: Someone that can't spell "privileges" and is too lazy to use a dictionary? Gone.

Or, calling someone else stupid, a moron or an idiot in a sentence replete with errors, such as this: "too stupid to make a valid poitn wouldnt"? Buh-bye, Bubba.

Hell, I figure we could weed out three-quarters of the Slashdot population in a short time, and probably very nearly all of those with UIDs over one million.

Re:Lack of Caring

[1u3hr]

do tell me what was inflammatory about my post

"Don't download copywritten material." We're actually talking about copyrights, not copywriters (i.e. the guys who write advertisements). So I would have modded it down as "malapropism".

Re:Lack of Caring

[echucker]

Guilty until proven innocent works for them, because they're providing the service. It pushes back on the user to provide proof they're not guilty. Perhaps draconian in your view, but a good use of whatever IT and legal limited resources U Kansas may have.

Re:Lack of Caring

[Anonymous Coward]

It will not happen. Students today are the sheep their parents are. Gone are the "you are not trampling my rights activists" from the 60's and 70's. students now roll over and play dead for the administration like good puppies.

The young today are incredibly passive and esay to control. Exactly what the Government has been molding you to be.

Conform, do what the overlord says, we have always been at war with eurasia.

Re:Lack of Caring

[Pig Hogger]

One stupid moderation of a valid point gets your moderation privelidges removed forever.

Must be what happens, since the last 5-6 years, my IP has been repeatedly "banned" for a few days after I have reposted downmodded tro^h^h^hposts, and I haven't seen any moderator points for the last 3-4 years or so...

Like if I care...

Re:Lack of Caring

[mikelang]

Applying the rule to unproved claims seems to violate presumption of innocence, doesn't it? I wonder how far we need to go, before judge obliges them to follow the presumption. It seems to be placed in US constitution :-).

Re:Lack of Caring

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

Right. Because there's only one university, and they can't possibly go to school somewhere else.

Re:Lack of Caring

[at_slashdot]

If the students care enough they won't go to that University.

Re:Lack of Caring

[Chandon Seldon]

As a current student at another university, I can assure you that giving up quietly would not be my response to this sort of unreasonable policy. I'd be rounding up other students to determine what the most efficient protest technique would be.

Re:Lack of Caring

[Oligonicella]

From KU's page -- "if you are caught".

What part of caught makes it hard for you to understand they aren't innocent?

Re:Lack of Caring

[Anonymous Coward]

>Ahh yes, because somewhere along the line "guilty until proven innocent" became the de facto standard.

I love how people garbage like this, and get modded up by the other idiots here.

It's not a criminal court, so that standard doesn't apply.

But gosh, it's a nice kneejerk reaction, too, and sure does sound good. It whips all of the copyright infringement fans into a posting frenzy, which in turn generates revenue for Slashdot. That is why the "editors" constantly post these articles, which are basically trolls.

Re:Lack of Caring

[smallfries]

Yeah, like the guy that modded you insightful. That would show him...

Re:Lack of Caring

[nurb432]

How about change schools? THAT would hit them in the pocketbook.

Dropping internet service wouldn't make a dent in the schools bottomline, and besides, im sure the students need the access to get their assignments done so dropping it as a protest really isnt an option for them.

Re:Lack of Caring

[westlake]

If the students care enough, they will all cancel their accounts. When the University sees a drop in revenue, they will have to decide.

What the University may see is a lower-cost academic network being used for academic purposes.

Re:Lack of Caring

[Lurker2288]

I wonder that myself, particularly because UoK is a state school. But IANAL, so who knows?

Re:Lack of Caring

[Lurker2288]

So, the innocent have nothing to fear? That's completely reassuring.

Re:Lack of Caring

[Attila Dimedici]

The University won't see a drop of revenue. The students are almost certainly automatically billed as part of the enrolling or Residency. Even the students who are banned will probably still have to pay the fee. Usually the fee for this is part of a "Student Activity" fee or some such. At most colleges and universities, you can choose not to use a service, but you can't choose not to pay for it.

Re:Lack of Caring

[dal20402]

Obviously I'm not the one who downmodded you, but I completely understand the downmod.

Your post was inflammatory because you flat ignored multiple previous posts that explained the problem with your logic. I'll say it again: This policy doesn't ban those who infringe copyright. It bans, without any sort of appeal rights, those whom any arbitrary party accuses of infringing copyright. You can "not download copywritten [sic] material" and still get kicked off if someone decides to accuse you of downloading... when, for example, you were downloading excerpts for a recognized fair use, or the person who had your dynamic IP after you was downloading, or the accuser just had it out for you for some reason.

Re:Lack of Caring

[nomadic]

How about change schools? THAT would hit them in the pocketbook.

It's a public university, so every student is basically subsidized by the taxpayers. Getting rid of a student theoretically saves the state money.

Re:Lack of Caring

[nurb432]

True, it saves the state money if its a public school, but the matching funds go down for every student lost, and hurts the school, which is the goal.

Re:Lack of Caring

[MontyApollo]

>>Ahh yes, because somewhere along the line "guilty until proven innocent" became the de facto standard.

That's the way it usually works on campus. In the case of academic misconduct, if a professor accuses you of cheating or plagiarism, the burden of proof is much more heavy on the student.

Re:Lack of Caring

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously didn't go to college when ResNet has been around. They don't directly bill you for it. They include it as part of your student general purpose fee. Also, it's the ONLY internet service available on-campus. Lose ResNet privileges and live in a dorm? You just lost the internet until you move out. Lose ResNet privileges and have a class in a computer lab? You're screwed. Lose ResNet privileges, live off campus and have no computer lab classes? You can't get on the internet while on campus and have to go off campus to do your research/homework. It's basically the worst thing that can happen outside of getting expelled, probably.

In my opinion, this is the single worst policy in regards to school copyright issues I've seen. Sure, a school may get copyright notices, but have you seen a school get sued yet? No. So just let the notices come, and if you want to be an ass, tell the infringed upon parties which of your students it was so they can get the lawsuit going. This is probably just as effective, but you don't have to worry about upsetting students who would claim unjust treatment. You can just say, well, the courts will handle it all.

Captcha: unrest

Re:Lack of Caring

[shmlco]

"It bans, without any sort of appeal rights"

From the KU policy, "...you will receive an email and written notice that your access to the ResNet Network has been temporarily suspended for 5 business days, during which time you may appeal if you believe the copyright infringement notice was received in error."

"Your post was inflammatory because you flat ignored multiple previous posts that explained the problem with your logic."

Ditto.

Re:Lack of Caring

[ookabooka]

The ResNet fee is primarily a connection fee and not a usage fee. If your service is permanently terminated, there will be no subsequent refund of the ResNet activation fee, regardless of when the violation occurred.

Uh. . .I'm betting they charge ~$150 or so a semester. . .I'd love to testify to the amount of work that would go into "connecting" a comptuer to the network. . .adding a MAC addy to a whitelist is worth $150 these days? Damn I could make a fortune doing that. . .I think that sentence there offended me more than the insane zero-tolerance policy.

Re:Lack of Caring

[dal20402]

You're right about the appeal (although I have my doubts about any appeal process that, as this one does, follows a guilty-until-proven-innocent approach and requires "written documentation" as proof of innocence).

I should just note that my mistake was also made by both the summary and TFA, and was not corrected by "multiple previous posts." To figure out that you were right I had to find KU's DMCA page, which is not linked from any of the above.

Re:Lack of Caring

[shmlco]

Protest all you want. Just don't download stuff to which you're not entitled. How hard is that?

Re:Lack of Caring

[QuoteMstr]

I know it DOESN'T apply, but why SHOULDN'T it? The principle of assuming people are innocent until shown otherwise recognizes that it's much worse to punish an innocent person than to let a guilty one go free, and has been a hallmark of our society for centuries. Why would this argument apply any less strongly to a non-government, non-criminal system of trial and punishment? I think you're confusing legality and morality here.

Re:Lack of Caring

[init100]

From the quote posted by OverlordQ:

If the University of Kansas receives notice of a copyright violation

What is a "notice of copyright infringement"? A letter from the RIAA? Sure, the RIAA has never filed a erroneous lawsuit. Just like dead people can download movies and music from p2p networks.

Re:Lack of Caring

[Miseph]

"Troll" is a relative term. Since it is the site maintainers who determine which stories are posted and what bent the site will have, it isn't trolling for them to consistently post articles of their particular bent. The simple fact of the matter is that if you don't like how the site is run, don't approve of its perspective, or are otherwise displeased by the contents of Slashdot, that you are more than welcome to not read anything here.

What is trolling is coming out of the woodwork to bitch about how the editors pick stories and how everyone but you is wrong and stupid.

In other words: pot, meet kettle.

Re:Lack of Caring

[amber_of_luxor]

Just don't download stuff to which you're not entitled. How hard is that?,/p>

A: The policy clearly states "all copyright material". Therefore even if one is entitled to download the material, one is in violation of the UKansas policy. Was the intent "All Copyright Material" or "All Copyright Material which one is not authorized to download"? The DMCA is about distributing material, not receiving material. As such, the former wording "All Copyright Material" is the logical intent. Therefore your viewing of a video that is embedded in a page is a violation --- regardless of whether or not you knew that the video was on the page before you went there. (There are thousands of examples on /. of links to material that are not what they are purported to be.)

B: The appeals process requires that one proves that one did not download stuff. How do you prove that you did not download stuff? If the user runs Windows Vista, there is an audit trail that might be useful to demonstrate that nothing was downloaded. If you use Linux there probably isn't an audit trail that could be useful.

C: The policy doesn't cover accidental/unintentional/unwanted downloading of material. Given the current insecurity of MIE, it would be trivial for a page to have several thousand pop-ups, pop-unders, and the like, several of which will also automatically start a download to the system that the user has no knowledge of. Granted, the student shouldn't be using Windows, much less MIE in the first place. But students are stupid, and will use things that are fatally flawed until they learn better.

Amber

Re:Lack of Caring

[Chandon Seldon]

Protest all you want. Just don't download stuff to which you're not entitled. How hard is that?

The extent to which students should be downloading pirate content on a university residential network would make for an interesting discussion. I'd love to have that discussion at some point.

This story has nothing to do with that question though. This story is 100% about due process and appropriate penalties. Even if we assume that students should be downloading zero pirate content, the school IT department shouldn't be interfering with the primary goals of the school (education and research) with an unreasonable zero tolerance policy. That's like expelling a student for stealing a whiteboard marker.

Re:Lack of Caring

[The One and Only]

The Resnet is the network service provided in university dorms. Students can easily live off campus and buy internet service on the open market--in a Kansas college town the rent will probably be lower than their housing fees already are. That's certainly the case at Washington State in eastern Washington, where the dorms are patrolled continuously by taser-wielding university police and where downloading large amounts of data gets your resnet service cut off.

Re:Lack of Caring

[r_jensen11]

If the students care enough, they will all cancel their accounts. The summary specificies ResNet. At my university (Not Kansas), ResNet was the only source of internet available in the dorms, as well as anywhere else on campus (think: libraries, staff computers, etc.) ResNet also happens to include phone and television service withour university as well. Oh yeah, and if you live on campus/in the dorms, you don't pay extra for resnet service, you have to pay for it no matter what.

Re:Lack of Caring

[loraksus]

This is typical slashdot behavior. Take everything out of context so everybody can get riled up about it. Sure the front page says 'copyrighted material', you think they'd put the full legalese on the frontpage or just a blurb saying "Its Bad, mkay"?
But if anybody would take the time to actually *READ* the subject at hand, you would find this paragraph:

And if you would take the time to actually read http://www.dmca.ku.edu/, you'd see the following.
University officials reserve the right to access, examine, intercept, monitor and copy the files and/or sessions of any user
Isn't that nice? Under the same "agreement", they can rifle through the contents or your hard drives and copy your files for shits and giggles. Looks like these people are really concerned about copyright.

Re:Lack of Caring

[shmlco]

"That's like expelling a student for stealing a whiteboard marker."

Okay, enlighten me. Exactly where do we draw the line on stealing? A car? A computer? A ring? What can I habitually steal such that I deserve no punishment whatsoever?

"an unreasonable zero tolerance policy"

Matter of viewpoint. To me, unreasonable would be expulsion. Thus is just blocking access to the service that's being abused. He can still go to the library or computer lab or Starbucks.

And I suspect that, come next school year, he'll appreciate the privilege enough not to abuse it.

Re:Lack of Caring

[Chandon Seldon]

Okay, enlighten me. Exactly where do we draw the line on stealing? A car? A computer? A ring? What can I habitually steal such that I deserve no punishment whatsoever?

I don't know - but any policy that expels a university student for the first offense of stealing a whiteboard marker is obviously absurd. Hell, the student could have grabbed a whiteboard marker that was lying around in order to give a presentation. Someone who habitually steals every whiteboard marker should be treated completely differently.

Matter of viewpoint. To me, unreasonable would be expulsion. Thus is just blocking access to the service that's being abused.

They're taking away internet access from a student's residence. Removing access to one of the primary forms of modern communication and information access (the primary form for many university students) from the place where a student is required to live is pretty drastic.

Re:Lack of Caring

[StikyPad]

Fortunate, then, that there's no punishment involved. If I run a business, it's up to me to decide whether or not I want to provide services to you, and as long as that decision is not based on race, sex, creed, color, or disability, then it is perfectly legitimate. It's my prerogative to decide that it's more trouble than it's worth to do business with you, just as the university can find the same regarding its students. It is also the students' choice as to where they enroll.

That said, the lack of an appeal process opens the door for abuse, which may turn out to be even more trouble than it's worth.

Re:Lack of Caring

[shmlco]

"... is pretty drastic..."

Perhaps. But if the punishment is easy then it's not going to be much of a deterrent, is it?

It's like those littering fines that are posted at being $1,000 a violation. Go ahead and toss the trash out the window if you want, as you probably won't get caught. But if you do, you're screwed.

So why risk it?

Re:Lack of Caring

[Chandon Seldon]

But if the punishment is easy then it's not going to be much of a deterrent, is it?

The University has two choices: they can focus on trying to deter students from file sharing, or they can focus on education and research and not massively disrupt those things by denying a student internet access in their dorm. Personally, I think that trying to deter file sharing should be somewhere behind stocking a sixth flavor of ice tea in the cafeteria in the University's list of priorities - not ahead of education and research.

Re:Lack of Caring

[shmlco]

That's treating it as a black-and-white either-or proposition which assumes you can do one or the other but not both. They seem to be able to do education AND cut the grass in the quad AND do campus security AND run cafeterias AND take out the trash AND run health services AND do plenty of other things at the same time.

Personally, I'd rather they focused on education and not spend BILLIONS on college football stadiums and programs. They're supposed to be institution of higher learning, not NFL farm leagues.

But that's just me.

And again, all the kid has to do is not break the law. It's. Not. That. Hard.

Re:Lack of Caring

[Chandon Seldon]

And again, all the kid has to do is not break the law. It's. Not. That. Hard.

Some students will download pirated data, regardless of the school's policies. The question isn't if they should have done that - they will do that. The question is whether or not the school should mess up their education (and potentially the school's research, depending on which students get tagged) in response.

Re:Lack of Caring

[shmlco]

It's not a school policy. It's the law. Break the law, and you (usually) suffer consequences.

I know it's an old-non-exact analogy, but if the same kid shoplifted a CD or DVD from a store and got caught, it too would tend to "mess up" their education.

I'm done with this conversation, as we're going in circles. I think actions have consequences. You seem to think that we should slap their wrist, then pat them on their head, and send them off to do it again.

'Nuff said.

Re:Lack of Caring

[Chandon Seldon]

It's not a school policy. It's the law. Break the law, and you (usually) suffer consequences.

It's not the law that's causing the problem here, it's the school policy. If someone actually sues the student for copyright infringement and a court gets involved, so be it. Until a court has actually ruled against the student, they shouldn't be severely penalized for an alleged civil infraction.

I know it's an old-non-exact analogy, but if the same kid shoplifted a CD or DVD from a store and got caught, it too would tend to "mess up" their education.

Probably not. Probably they'd get fined $100 and have to do 10 hours of community service or something. The punishment for actual theft definitely wouldn't be as bad as getting cut off from the internet for a term.

I think actions have consequences. You seem to think that we should slap their wrist, then pat them on their head, and send them off to do it again.

Actions do have consequences. For example, setting an unreasonable policy in relation to internet file sharing at a university will disrupt students educations unnecessarily.

first ps0t

[Anonymous Coward]

Violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is against the law.

Translation: Violation of [a law] is against the law. Accordingly, violation of the law stating that violation of a law is against the law, is against the law. Furthermore, violation of the law stating...

Was this announcement composed by Kansas University of Kansas' Department of Redundancy Department?

Re:first ps0t

[Anonymous Coward]

Aw crap, six minutes late... But FrostedWheat earlier/abowe had a really nice catch (and me laughing out loud) so I'm not complaining ;-)

Crack Pot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is setting up the pot on when the KU president's computer is going to be filled with Britney Spears music and child pornography?

Congress, RIAA and Uni prep for Arms Race

[DontScotty]

So - Congress is after the schools to conform to the RIAA

The RIAA wants the schools to conform to the laws passed by Congress.

The schools will be graduating the future leaders who will take RIAA jobs and seats in Congress.

Wash-Rinse-Repeat.

And in the end, the winner will be decided by follow-the-dollars.

Re:Congress, RIAA and Uni prep for Arms Race

[TheSHAD0W]

Heh. It's bad enough they've managed to piss off all their real customers, now they're in the process of pissing off future Congresscritters. 9_9

Baby Meet Bathwater

[iluvcapra]

TFA mentions that Stanford and other schools charge high "Reconnection" fees after they block your MAC for sharing files. Why don't they just do something like that and make a load of money?

"Zero-tolerance" is all about moralism, and rarely about correcting behavior, or "teaching" people anything. It'll have a good effect statistically, but the people who get their privileges pulled won't have their attitude changed, they'll just conclude the "RIAA-Nazis" blackmailed his school into screwing with his education.

It doesn't matter how true it is, rules must give the appearance of fairness in order to be respected.

Re:Baby Meet Bathwater

[SamP2]

It's not that I support RIAA or anything, but your argument is invalid.

Saying "The measure changes statistics but not attitude" does not mean the measure is bad.

For example, if you have tough sentences for violent robbery, it won't change the attitude of the would-be robbers, just make them more afraid, and thus less robberies are committed.

Let's not get start on the whole "copyright infringement is not a crime" stuff, OK? Crime or no crime, it's something RIAA and co. want to root out. You can have an entirely unrelated argument whether it's morally right or not, but you do have to admit that it does work to that end -- sometimes making people afraid of doing something is the best way to ensure it doesn't get done.

Rules must be *fair* to be *respected*, but being *tough* is fine if all you care is about them being *effective*

Re:Baby Meet Bathwater

[iluvcapra]

For example, if you have tough sentences for violent robbery, it won't change the attitude of the would-be robbers, just make them more afraid

We aren't talking about violent robbery, we're talking about copyright infringement. You can't equate a crime against intellectual property with violence. People who copy Content without paying for it are pretty far down the ladder of malfeasance, and spending a little effort to correct them might be worth it, compared to a violent felon. Most states don't deprive someone of their freedom forever after one violent offense, they, as a matter of fact, often have a three-strikes policy (excepting violence that is heinous, murderous, or pre-meditated). People who commit violent crimes often don't plan too, and thus aren't afraid of the punishment.

Let's not get start on the whole "copyright infringement is not a crime" stuff, OK?

I specifically tried to avoid addressing the merits of the "RIAA-Nazi blackmail" argument , but you seem to have read a conclusion into my statements that does not exist. FWIW, I doubt the school would have a zero-tolerance policy if not for the constant threat of lawsuits.

I am curious how this policy compares with their "Academic Integrity" (ie plagiarism) policy. Those generally are "one strike," though there is extensive student and faculty review and juridical proceedings before someone is expelled. I don't see any of that here.

Rules must be *fair* to be *respected*, but being *tough* is fine if all you care is about them being *effective*

You can't let "effectiveness" be the only metric. We could take every male between the age of 16 and 26 and keep them in prison, and it'd be EXTREMELY effective in reducing violent crime (something like 90%). Of course, such a solution punishes people who have no mens rea, who intend no ill to anyone or thing, and when you punish people who others can see are not guilty, the law suffers.

Re:Baby Meet Bathwater

[Zironic]

Has that ever been proven? From my understanding there is no connection between the punishment and crime ratio. Americas high crime rate + Large jail sentences/death penalty vs countries like Sweden's lower crime rates and much milder punishments. Most people committing a crime doesn't count on getting caught. So far I've never seen any "effective" result from being "tough".

Re:Baby Meet Bathwater

[ajs318]

Bollocks. Rule by fear always breaks down, sooner or later, because fear can be overcome. This is something that authoritarians don't seem to get. Fear of getting caught is not what demotivates the majority of people from committing crime. That's just a Tory oversimplification. If someone is really determined, they will analyse the balance of probabilities purely in terms of a favourable vs. unfavourable outcome with a cool head.

Once you force someone into a corner, where the choice is "do something that you fear or die", they will choose to live, because they're more afraid of dying than of whatever you were going to do to them. In fact, the whole "overcoming fear" thing is how cave-men evolved into us. Oh, wait, you said Kansas .....

Re:Baby Meet Bathwater

[slash.duncan]

TFA mentions that Stanford and other schools charge high "Reconnection" fees after they block your MAC for sharing files. Why don't they just do something like that and make a load of money?

No, TFA does NOT talk about blocking MACs, because that would be fscking stupid. Every time I reboot and reconnect to my ISP, I use a new MAC and therefore get a new IP (privacy... sure, the ISP can trace it, but anyone else has a bit tougher time without the ISPs cooperation), due to a little program called macchanger integrated into my bootscripts. Its site http://www.alobbs.com/macchanger says there's a similar program, SMAC, for MSWormOS. Even without that, a $5 new NIC is a new MAC.

Rather, presumably, these schools use some form of authenticated login, with school accounts. All they have to do is shut down the account and refuse to open a new one for that student (tracked after all by student ID, they change that, they lose all their credits and get to pay all sorts of new money to the school to start over), either at all (KS) or until the hefty graduated reconnect fee is paid.

Of course, there's always logging in with someone else's auth, but if they get caught doing that without permission, in most cases it'd be expulsion for cracking, and pretty much rightly so, IMO. If they have permission, then at minimum, the one lending them that permission is risking /their/ account, for the same reasons.

It'll be interesting to see how this turns out, and whether they change the wording to /unauthorized/ copyrighted content before they get sued on that wording or not. As TFA states, however (and this it /does/ state), the practical effect as already being seen elsewhere is likely to simply be the widespread popularization of darknets. Sure, some will get caught, but kids have a way of believing they are almost invincible and being willing to play the odds, so it'll keep happening, because it simply isn't practical for them to bust and enforce on 75% of their student body.

Duncan

Re:Baby Meet Bathwater

[kryptkpr]

No, TFA does NOT talk about blocking MACs, because that would be fscking stupid. Every time I reboot and reconnect to my ISP, I use a new MAC and therefore get a new IP (privacy... sure, the ISP can trace it, but anyone else has a bit tougher time without the ISPs cooperation), due to a little program called macchanger integrated into my bootscripts. Its site http://www.alobbs.com/macchanger [alobbs.com] says there's a similar program, SMAC, for MSWormOS. Even without that, a $5 new NIC is a new MAC.

I'm not sure exactly what you think you're getting 'privacy' from, but you know that your ISP looks at the MAC address of your Cable/DSL modem, and not that of your network card, right?

I dont know about DSL but in the case of cable, where there is no PPPoE-style authentication being performed, your modem's MAC literally is your authentication and a device with a different MAC won't be allowed to connect. Does DSL work differently? Someone enlighten me.

Re:Baby Meet Bathwater

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

So the obvious solution to the intellectual "property" infringement problem is to make copyright infringement punishable by death :).

Re:Baby Meet Bathwater

[1u3hr]

For example, if you have tough sentences for violent robbery, it won't change the attitude of the would-be robbers, just make them more afraid, and thus less robberies are committed.

"Thus less robberies are committed", eh? How about "thus robbers are more more afraid of beinbg caught, so prepared to kill rather than leave witnesses"? Equally likely it seems to me. but being *tough* is fine if all you care is about them being *effective*

And how is "being tough" working out in Baghdad? High probability of death for committing crimes has really made that a haven of peace and love.

Re:Baby Meet Bathwater

[slash.duncan]

Every time I reboot and reconnect to my ISP, I use a new MAC and therefore get a new IP (privacy... sure, the ISP can trace it, but anyone else has a bit tougher time without the ISPs cooperation), due to a little program called macchanger integrated into my bootscripts

I'm not sure exactly what you think you're getting 'privacy' from, but you know that your ISP looks at the MAC address of your Cable/DSL modem, and not that of your network card, right?

You /did/ note that I said the ISP could trace it, right? It's privacy (of a fashion) from others, however. Unavoidably (unless I use TOR or the like), all the web sites I visit get my IP. Great, that's the way they get content back to me, but there's no reason they need an unbroken profile of me at the same IP going back months, unless I choose to give it to them by allowing cookies or the like. At a few sites (/. comes to mind) I do, and even provide an even closer ID-ed profile by actually logging in, so it's linked to whatever info I provided when I setup the login. plus the profile of whatever posts I've made while logged in.

With a bit of work and some cooperation between various entities, I've no illusions that anyone sufficiently motivated, particularly the gov or in many cases someone pretexting, could link it all together, even without the cooperation of my ISP, due to my IP appearing in various logs that link to web posts I've made, in emails and news posts, etc. Certainly, my ISP has the info to link even closer and with less effort, but this isn't so much about them, as about the Googles and others of the world that would otherwise be able to assemble a profile quite easily based on seldom changed (while my cable IP is officially dynamic, it changes maybe once a year or so if I don't change the MAC, perhaps less often than that) IP info alone. With cookies set to session-only and scripting off by default, and with privoxy setup to block or randomize (within limits) various other conceivably trackable headers (if-none-match, blocked, if-modified-since, randomized within a range, etc), IP tracking remains a rather practical way to profile me. Changing it every week or so, when I reboot for the latest linux-rc or whatever, chops up that profiling into relatively less personally revealing short segments.

Now, I DO use a relatively uncommon browser by default (Konqueror), and deliberately do NOT hide its user-agent. The IPs I get from my ISP all contain the city in the reverse lookup, and while the subnet does change within a group, if a web server operator correlates user agent with IP address, chances are they could still ID me fairly accurately, no illusions there either. However, the costs of doing so are a bit higher and the reliability rather lower, and I judge the tradeoff in publicizing the fact that not everyone's using the big four (IE/FF/Safari/Opera) worth it, thus the deliberately NOT hiding that info.

So anyway, yeah, it's a privacy thing, but I'm not fooling myself on its limits, either from the ISP, or for a sufficiently motivated server-op on a server I visit regularly, pretty much anyone else either. It does make their work harder, however, and the results a bit less reliable, which is what I'm after and all I realistically know I'm going to get, without onion routing or the like, anyway.

Duncan

Re:Baby Meet Bathwater

[PaintyThePirate]

Actually, while my university has authenticated logins to access the network, the bans for copyright infringement (40 days) and exceeding allocated bandwith are based on MAC addresses. Which, since my school is also very geeky, has the effect of making the ban simply for show, presumably so that it looks like they are doing something about copyright infringement.

Re:Baby Meet Bathwater

[slash.duncan]

[M]y university has authenticated logins to access the network [but] the bans for copyright infringement (40 days) and exceeding allocated bandwith are based on MAC addresses. Which, since my school is also very geeky, has the effect of making the ban simply for show

That's very cool! =8^) Glad there's still some of that around.

Re:Baby Meet Bathwater

[Antique Geekmeister]

If you have a cable modem involved. Most universities I've encountered provide direct network ports to your room, activate specific MAC addresses to specific ports, and would not activate randomly connected devices. This causes a problem when someone replaces a computer in their dorm room, or if they have two and the university has no idea how to do that in its paperwork. I've actually seen a student connect a network switch to both ports in his room, because his laptop was connected to one and his desktop to another, and cause a serious disrubtion to the upstream switches when they did a router upgrade and it noticed access to both its VLAN's on the same ports.

Of course, the arrogant person claiming "I get a diffeent MAC every time I connect!" may be confused and means IP addresses assigned over DHCP, which actually are unlikely to change if only disconnected for a time shorter than the duration of the DHCP leases, or is discussing some other technology such as PPPoE, which does additional oddness but still allows tracking.

Re:Baby Meet Bathwater

[Anonymous Coward]

Rule by fear always breaks down

Rule by fear (achieved through force, i.e. coercion, or threat of force) is the only type of rule there is, because rule is, by definition, involuntary. A man cannot volunteer to be subject to force, just as he cannot force another man to volunteer. The two modes of human interaction are mutually exclusive; that is, in fact, what gives them both meaning (they are defined in relation to each other).

Government is the organization holding the special right to employ force or threat of force over a given territory; anyone else who does so is a criminal. This is the one constant (force or threat of force employed as the means) that holds true for all governments that have ever existed -- this is, of course, the only objective way to define government.

So rule by fear (force or threat thereof) is the only type of rule there is. Without the presence of coercion, any human interaction must be acknowledged as voluntary, and therefore not an example of rule.

Re:Baby Meet Bathwater

[MontyApollo]

>>TFA mentions that Stanford and other schools charge high "Reconnection" fees after they block your MAC for sharing files. Why don't they just do something like that and make a load of money?

I think there needs to be due process, but I think the punishments should be even stricter. It should be about teaching the students to be better citizens and to prepare them for the real world. Review the case like they would any type of academic misconduct, and for minor violations, especially with freshmen and sophmores, you get a slap on the wrist or maybe pay a small fine. But for excessive downloading and repeat offenders, especially for seniors, they should be expelled like you would be for cheating or plagiarism, or like you would be fired from your job. You could even have everybody sign an acknowledgment that they can be expelled for illegal downloading.

Re:Baby Meet Bathwater

[Anonymous Coward]

I can guarantee that not a single executed person has reoffended. That's a 0% recidivism rate. That's a perfectly effective result from being tough.

Re:Baby Meet Bathwater

[Anonymous Coward]

"Zero-tolerance" is all about moralism, ....

Actually it's about wagging your dick and looking around for the admiring smiles of those who can now see what a stallion you are. It has little to do with morality.

But it does lead to shows of extreme foolishness, as when a teenager was suspended from school for giving her fried a Midol to lessen her cramps. She was in violation of the school's "zero tolerance drug policy".

Just remember that anyone who asserts a zero tolerance polcy on anything is only looking for glory, not for a real solution to a real problem.

Re:Baby Meet Bathwater

[amber_of_luxor]

From my understanding there is no connection between the punishment and crime ratio.

In essence, you are correct. There is no correlation between the type of punishment, and the crime ratio.

There are a couple of driving forces that affect the crime rate:

1. The number of convictions per criminal act;
2. The number of wrongful convictions as a percentage of total convictions;
3. The number of laws that are enforced, as a percentage of the total number laws;

• The closer the first point is to 1.0, the lower the crime rate will be.
• The closer to zero the second point is, the lower the crime rate;
• The lower to zero the third point is, the higher the crime rate;
• Finally, the more laws in the country, the higher the crime rate;

Amber

Re:Baby Meet Bathwater

[ClamIAm]

Tories in Kansas? Inconceivable!

Re:Baby Meet Bathwater

[vuffi_raa]

that is very true- in most windows diagnostic software you have mac address changing tools- and most of it is freeware

sounds crap

[joe 155]

I'm not American, nor a lawyer, so I could be wrong... but as far as I know the DMCA contains many crazy rules which would be insanely easy to break - even breaking DRM to get access to a file which you have bought. Would this mean that they could get banned from the internet (which would effectively force them out of the halls they are in, because of how essential the internet is at uni) for just converting a protected WMA file so you can play it on linux? what about installing ntfs-3g? what about using an unlicenced mp3 codec? any unlincenced codec? just using linux (assuming they believe MS's claims about infringement)? Using any computer (hell, there are that many patents flying around that all computers violate; GUI ones, for example)...

Wouldn't all/most of these innocent things violate the DMCA? wouldn't that be enough to get you royally screwed?

Re:sounds crap

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you are caught downloading copyrighted material"...

Clearly, this is in reference to movies, music, etc and has nothing to do with NTFS-3G. Furthermore, it is in reference to downloading things you have no legal right to.

Re:sounds crap

[gardyloo]

I'm not American, nor a lawyer, so I could be wrong... If (!A and !B) then (!C)...

      I really never thought I'd see that combination of A, B, and C. It's ironically beautiful, somehow.

                    Signed,
                                  An American Lawyer

Re:sounds crap

[init100]

what about installing ntfs-3g? what about using an unlicenced mp3 codec? any unlincenced codec? just using linux (assuming they believe MS's claims about infringement)?

All of these possible violations would be patent infringements. Patents are not dealt with in the DMCA, as it only deals with copyright. And the university rule only talked about copyright infringement.

RIAA - KU Chapter

[DodgeRules]

So, is this the University of Kansas Chapter of the RIAA, or will the student only lose his/her use of the network AFTER being convicted in a court? We all know that the RIAA's view of things would have the students losing their rights as soon as an unverified complaint is registered.

Re:RIAA - KU Chapter

[canuck57]

So, is this the University of Kansas Chapter of the RIAA, or will the student only lose his/her use of the network AFTER being convicted in a court? We all know that the RIAA's view of things would have the students losing their rights as soon as an unverified complaint is registered.

I agree with the judge should decide, not the school unless it is academic related or hinders other students use of the network. If the RIAA wants the student, they must follow due process, this means innocent until proven guilty.

However, if convicted, forget about network access - kick them out of school! I am sure there is a "if engaged in a criminal activity you can be discharged..." somewhere. Enforce that as part of what should go into a degree is morality and ethics. But I guess a lot of rich "daddies" would not like that.

How will they know?

[taxevader]

Will they kick out students simply because the MAFIAA sent them a strongly worded letter? It would be the simplest and cheapest thing for them to do, and it wouldn't surprise me one bit.

Even if they are 'guilty'.. what if someone downloaded a ROM of a NES game he has in his basement at home? A track from a CD that doesn't play anymore? A no-cd patch for a game so he can play it on his laptop wherever he goes? According to their draconian proposal, all of these would mean you are cut off from the internet.. forever. Is it me or is that f&*king crazy?

A University should be fighting the powers that be, not aiding and abetting them.

Re:How will they know?

[giorgiofr]

A University should be fighting the powers that be, not aiding and abetting them. A University should be *teaching*. No more no less. What is this crap about morality, fighting, powers that be etc? It's a plcae where you go to *study*. Everything else is BS.

Re:How will they know?

[toQDuj]

Nope. A university should be a bastion of wisdom. They should correct, where others have accepted.
Incidentally, it also teaches, but that's in room 3b, which doesn't exist.

B.

Re:How will they know?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will they kick out students simply because the MAFIAA sent them a strongly worded letter? It would be the simplest and cheapest thing for them to do, and it wouldn't surprise me one bit.

How is it cheap to kick a student out? Don't students pay tuition - aren't they your customers. Your sentence is like saying if people use Starbucks Wi-Fi to infringe on copyright the "simplest and cheapest" thing for Starbucks to do is not allow these people into its stores anymore... Ridiculous.

Re:How will they know?

[OverlordQ]

Will they kick out students simply because the MAFIAA sent them a strongly worded letter?

No, might try reading their policies next time.

Re:How will they know?

[Lewisham]

When I worked for a ResNet that shall go unnamed, almost all students would admit to copyright infringement when asked in a formal setting. There was not a single case where the MPAA/RIAA fired off an email where the student was not guilty. I know it's terribly fashionable around these parts to protest that universities should be standing up for students and such, but it is one thing to be the university that won't hand over names with IP addresses, and quite another to be the one that the MPAA/RIAA decides to take to court over the issue. The legal grey area, at least in the UK, had my ResNet worried, and felt they had to be seen doing something. Whether that is true in the US is another matter, and I can't comment on it. Honestly, I don't blame Kansas for their stance, and I don't think they are doing the students a disservice. Presuming they have some way of verifying claims made against students, why shouldn't they attempt to crack down on illegal uses of their bandwidth?

Re:How will they know?

[DavidpFitz]

A University should be *teaching*. No more no less. What is this crap about morality, fighting, powers that be etc? It's a plcae where you go to *study*. Everything else is BS.

I don't think you've thought it through. A University is for far more than teaching - in fact I'd go as far as to say teaching is secondary to research. Schools teach, community colleges teach but a proper University must do far more than teach. It must be a community of teachers and scholars - Universitas.

Re:How will they know?

[FreyarHunter]

IANAL, however my observations.

..someone downloaded a ROM of a NES game he has in his basement at home?
Is it a copyrighted piece of software? If so it is still illegal despite the individual still owning an original cartridge, doesn't allow him to download a copy of it from another cartridge. The "backup" has to be made from his legally owned one.

A track from a CD that doesn't play anymore?
Is it a copyrighted piece of music? Even then according to the government you don't have a right to copy music for archival and backup purposes anyway. Even if you did, the SAME restrictions would still apply as the original NES ROM.

A no-cd patch for a game so he can play it on his laptop wherever he goes?
A no-cd patch is deemed illegal purely due to it's ability to bypass security on a disc according to the DMCA. (Notice a pattern?) Yeah, it's frustrating, and provided the student has his legal liscence (pre-"patched") by all means he should be able to play it where he wants, provided it is also installed on one computer, and one computer only. (Something that pops up in EULAs that no one reads due to the lawyer-garbage text.)


According to their draconian proposal, all of these would mean you are cut off from the internet.. forever.

Nope, according to the proposal, issues number one and two would cause a cut from the network, not the third. The third itself isn't exactly a copyrighted piece of software, despite the legality issues involved.

I find that this proposal is... okay provided that the cut is done after the accused has been found guilty, and not part of some shotgun scheme.

Re:How will they know?

[ajs318]

..someone downloaded a ROM of a NES game he has in his basement at home?
Is it a copyrighted piece of software? If so it is still illegal despite the individual still owning an original cartridge, doesn't allow him to download a copy of it from another cartridge. The "backup" has to be made from his legally owned one.

Technically, maybe. However, the two are utterly indistinguible and the law demands proof beyond reasonable doubt. The fact of having another copy of the same information somewhere in their possession casts reasonable doubt on whether the copy was obtained illegally, since it's possible -- unlikely, but the business of the courts is not to determine what is more likely, but to establish facts beyond reasonable doubt -- that the copy in question could have been made from that.

Re:How will they know?

[jez9999]

I disagree. If universities are gonna offer a net connection, they offer it, and set yourself up as a goddamn common carrier. It is not their job to be the moral police, or take this bullshit from big corporations' lawyers. If they insist on doing that, I encourage every university student to get their own independent net connection. That's what I did, and I've had none of this ridiculous trouble.

Re:How will they know?

[Antique Geekmeister]

This is true of some universities. It's hardly true of all. There are plenty of adult colleges, community colleges, and technical colleges for whom research is not even a secondary goal, much less a primary one.

Re:How will they know?

[DavidpFitz]

This is true of some universities. It's hardly true of all. There are plenty of adult colleges, community colleges, and technical colleges for whom research is not even a secondary goal, much less a primary one.

Where I live, that's not a University - It's a college, technical college or something else branded under tertiary education.

Re:How will they know?

[init100]

Actually, it looks like they will. I read the information, and it surely reads like a letter from the MAFIAA is enough. If you haven't proved that you are innocent within five days, your network access is permanently removed.

Re:How will they know?

[init100]

Presuming they have some way of verifying claims made against students

If you read their terms, you'll find that a letter from the MAFIAA is enough proof to cut your connection permanently, unless you prove that you are innocent within five business days. That to me means that they won't investigate any infringement claims, but rather take it at face value and assume that they are correct.

the 11th commandment strikes again

[turing_m]

If you are caught downloading copyrighted material...

By "Caught"

[JamesRose]

Now, I've never known any school official to walk in on someone downloading illegal files, so you cant be caught that way.

The likely hood is that they don't ahve the resources to monitor traffic, so that's pretty much out.

So the two things are left is the RIAA just sending a letter to the school about anyone they like and that person gets their internet access and their career at that university absolutely screwed. Or the university searches your files, hmmmm... time to invest in one of those new fangled MP3 players, store all your music on that and not keep copies on your copmuter (this works only if you have friends who will help you replace your files if they are lost due to theft of the mp3 player or death of the mp3 player)

Re:By "Caught"

[smallfries]

The likely hood is that they don't ahve the resources to monitor traffic, so that's pretty much out.

Why not? You're assuming that the majority of p2p traffic is legitimate. If the vast, vast, vast majority is illegal and they are running a zero tolerance policy then it would be easy to police. Set up a packet fiter to report filenames being shared against user accounts. For everyone that looks even vaguely commerical throw the book at them. If it's a mistake they'll go through the complaints procedure and appeal. If not then your volume of p2p traffic to monitor has just collapsed and there isn't a resource issue.

I'm not saying this is the lo-evil way of doing it. But a university really wanted to cut out illegal (in the copyright sense p2p) traffic then they could.

Re:By "Caught"

[Antique Geekmeister]

You've said something misleading, namely:

> The likely hood is that they don't ahve the resources to monitor traffic, so that's pretty much out.

The typical CD or DVD downloader won't be noticed, I agree. But the "I've built a 3 Terabyte movie and CD library with my Christmas money, d00dz, grab what you want off my website!" is going to show up to the most casual network monitoring. This is especially the case among IT staff at the college themselves. There are plenty of examples of the worst such abusers being the IT staff, part-time or full-time, taking advantage of the bandwidth and disk space for departments for personal file sharing.

I've seen that far too often among new IT staff, in fact.

Re:By "Caught"

[damium]

My thoughts exactly. I've personally developed a traffic monitoring solution that could catch both packet details (for use metrics) and file names (for monitoring) at 10Mbps using a 133Mhz pentium. Commercial solutions that do the same run just a few thousand and can monitor speeds >100Mbps. We did use the monitor to crack down on p2p (we just used strong warnings and told the users to uninstall it). We haven't seen p2p use reemerge since, but then we don't have a ResNet to worry about.

JUST 1 More reason...

[ganjadude]

Not to go to Kansas first the Kansas baptist church Than the board of ed. Now this??? Kansas you are like the red headed stepchild

Re:JUST 1 More reason...

[SnapShot]

What are you talking about? This is great! This gives the C.S. students of the university a challenge.. I expect U of Kansas to be a new center for achievement in user-friendly encryption, anonymizing software, anonymous p2p tools, and network cracking tools.

Re:JUST 1 More reason...

[shmlco]

So? Bits are still bits, encrypted or otherwise, and ultimately a boatload of them still need to show up at your computer to get the latest pirate copy of Transformers. Just watch the traffic patterns.

Besides, is it really THAT hard not to steal music and movies?

Especially when you can go to half.com and get practically any disc you want for a couple of bucks. Personally, I expect CDR sales to go way up in KC.

Re:JUST 1 More reason...

[nnkx00]

There's plenty of other things which can cause disproportionate network usage. I'd probably just turn on Tor and tell it that I have, say, 4 Mbps to share and I'm fairly sure that it will look like I'm downloading something... What's traffic analysis going to do then?

Re:JUST 1 More reason...

[Rakarra]

The traffic analysis of "You're soaking up University bandwidth and haven't been able to justify how it relates to classes yet. Excessive usage == suspended account."

Abuses?

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine you don't like some students, and send them some mp3s by email and then report them, will they get their account banned?

Re:Abuses?

[init100]

You don't even have to send them. You can form an organization claiming to be about protecting copyright of your members, and then send a (false) infringement notice in strong language. It is likely that the student would get cut off, just so that the university can show the world that they take copyright infringement seriously.

University of Kansas

[Anonymous Coward]

Now free of pr0n, unlicensed copyrighted material and students.

But it is legal to download copyrighted material

[SixByNineUK]

If you have the copyright holder's permission. I think they should talk to some real lawyers before writing these notices!

This is SO Kansas!!

[Newer Guy]

This doesn't surprise me at all. Kansas is the most backward thinking, Republican, pro big business, conservative state in the USA! I married a Kansan and let me tell you something-you can take the girl off the farm, but you can't take the farm off the girl! Fortunately, it's fixed now.. :)

Re:This is SO Kansas!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh.. no idea why someone thought it was appropriate to mod that as troll..

Re:This is SO Kansas!!

[laejoh]

you can take the girl off the farm, but you can't take the farm off the girl!

Why does that sound like a commercial for a bestiality site?

Re:This is SO Kansas!!

[Anonymous Coward]

>Fortunately, it's fixed now.. :)
She got tired of your emotional abuse and divorced you, I hope?

Re:This is SO Kansas!!

[toddestan]

You've obviously never been to Texas.

NAT U Rally

[Anonymous Coward]

Naturally, it won't be long till KU campus students find a way back onto the network.

Re:Yeah, it's titled, Thou Shall Not STEAL !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you mean one of these

"And God spoke all these words, saying: 'I am the Load thy God.

ONE: 'Thou shall have no other gods before Me.'

TWO: 'Thou shall not make for thyself a carved image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.'

THREE: 'Thou shall not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain.'

FOUR: 'Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy (that goez for you too ozzy).'

FIVE: 'Honor thy father and thy mother.'

SIX: 'Thou shall not murder.'

SEVEN: 'Thou shall not commit adultery.'

EIGHT: 'Thou shall not steal.'

NINE: 'Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.'

TEN: 'Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's house; Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is thy neighbor's.'

Now, go forth and multiply, but not thy living in trailer parks, nor thy commmunists."

You aren't banned, the owner is distributing it.

[Anonymous Coward]

They are "distributing" or making available to you to make a copy of something they own the copyright on. Whats wrong with that? Just don't start serving your copy of that page to others without permission.

When you copy music from someone that doesn't own the copyright, then theres a problem too.

You are right that if you take their wording literally then its funny, but there is either implicit consent to copy from the owner because they are distributing it or it can be explicitly given in a license e.g. GPL software.

Aehm, the blurb can't be right ...

[Kong the Medium]

If you are caught downloading copyrighted material, you will lose your ResNet privileges forever.

If i surf to any website, i start downloading copyrighted material, the moment i hit go. So it must read "downloading copyrighted material without permission of the copyright owner" and how on earth will this be enforced?

Implicit permission? Explicit permission?

How should Admin Eve know, that i phoned Alan Smithee in LA, and he gave me permission to download a 5 min .avi from his upcoming film "Gay Politicans go Hollywood" to include it in my essay about the corrupt politics in enforcing IP-Crimes?

Looks like i should be happy that i'm not in Kansas anymore.

Re:Aehm, the blurb can't be right ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like i should be happy that i'm not in Kansas anymore. Anyone who has escaped from Kansas should be happy 24/7.

Who Is More Important?

[pembo13]

The students or the cooperations? I kinda would have thought that Universities would do everything in their power to aid thei students en masse. Or do they somehow see a logically connection between aiding the blunt actions of these cooperations and the overall positive development of the students.

It seems inuitive that having zero copyright law would be a bad thing, and rarely is any extreme action a good thing. But unless you are feeding young mouths with the revenue generated by these aggressive tatics, what possible good can come of this? It doesn't help the students, and it doesn't seem to me to help society.

Re:Who Is More Important?

[Lurker2288]

"It doesn't help the students, and it doesn't seem to me to help society."

Until the MAFIAA decides to make an example of UoK by suing the hell of out them for not taking sufficient measures to eliminate illegal downloading using their bandwidth, at which point the state (read, publicly funded) school will probably be fined, which certainly doesn't help them in their mission of educating students. And while the policy may be draconian, your suggestion that being able to download copyrighted material illegally is in some way necessary to the "overall positive development of the students" seems a bit far-fetched.

Don't get me wrong, I would be pissed if I went to UoK right now, but but provided that the rule is ministered with a little intelligence, I can't really argue it's unfair for them to enforce the rules, particular when the school can be held liable if they fail to do so.

Re:Who Is More Important?

[MontyApollo]

>>It doesn't help the students, and it doesn't seem to me to help society.

Part of the role of the university is to make the student a better citizen, and obeying the laws is part of that. It also gets them ready for the real world - you can't download anything you want at work and not expect to get fired.

Re:Who Is More Important?

[loraksus]

The students or the cooperations? I kinda would have thought that Universities would do everything in their power to aid thei students en masse.

Hardly. Their policy at http://www.dmca.ku.edu/ states that...
University officials reserve the right to access, examine, intercept, monitor and copy the files and/or sessions of any user
Copyright apparantly doesn't mean a damn thing to them.

Buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy

[rxmd]

Looks like Kansas is finally going bye bye.

Re:Buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy

[Entropius]

Kind of ironic seeing that while visiting family in Alabama. AL has a constitution that's 2.5 times longer than the federal one, with around 900 amendments... ... and is corrupt as shit.

Why are we fussed about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only happening in America. And I can't think of a better bunch of genocidal murderers for it to happen to.

The world is so happy that Americans are their own worst enemies! Long may it remain so!

Typical Slashdot Sensationalism

[OverlordQ]

Typical Slashdot sensationalist story about the DMCA and people get all uppity before checking the facts of the case.

Let's take a look shall we:

If the University of Kansas receives notice of a copyright violation (downloading or uploading copyrighted material including music, movies, games, software, etc.) tied to the IP address registered in your name, you will receive an email and written notice that your access to the ResNet Network has been temporarily suspended for 5 business days, during which time you may appeal if you believe the copyright infringement notice was received in error. You have 5 business days from the date of notice to provide written documentation supporting your appeal to the Office of the Vice Provost for Student Success, describing the nature of the error. If your appeal is denied, your ResNet service will be permanently deactivated for the remainder of the time you live in KU's residential housing facilities. The ResNet fee is primarily a connection fee and not a usage fee. If your service is permanently terminated, there will be no subsequent refund of the ResNet activation fee, regardless of when the violation occurred.

1) You get a notice
2) You get a 5 day suspension
3) You have those 5 business days to submit an appeal if it was erroneous
4) If your appeal is denied (or you didn't submit one) your ResNet access is terminated.

It's the end of the world . . . oh wait . . .what's this?

You will still be able to use computer labs on campus and will retain the use of your KU email account.

So you lose your dorm access, but can walk down to a computer lab . . .

So I guess the moral of the story is, don't get caught, or don't use the schools network to download your movies

Re:Typical Slashdot Sensationalism

[argStyopa]

Generally I'm with you on the Slashdot sensationalism thing, but in this case, it's somewhat justified.

So, if I understand their system, the merest COMPLAINT will get you a suspension that will turn perma-ban if you don't appeal?

Simple, people (including students, since the source of the ban doesn't have to be particularly valid) can FLOOD the U with complaints and allegations. They don't have to be PROVEN, merely asserted. Don't like the people in that dorm? A couple of hours with a computer and printer and voila! you've just ginned up 350 complaint letters.

Then the burden is on THEM to appeal. THEN the university has to investigate/adjudicate every one.

See how dumb that is?

No, this is as stupid as holding phone companies responsible for the conversations over their lines. That was determined a long time ago to be ridiculous, yet today apparently the powers-that-be are too ball-less to actually SET a precedent that might make the RIAA/MPAA angry.

Re:Typical Slashdot Sensationalism

[poetmatt]

That indeed doesnt' seem as sensational as the article itself was, but... Where exactly was that on the ResNet? I didn't see it, and was browsing through their crap this morning looking. What I saw on their fair use agreement is "understand that if I receive a copyright violation notice that my ResNet service will be de-activated, there will be no refund of ResNet fees and that I will be unable to use ResNet for the duration of my stay in the Residence Halls." I can't find your part about the 5 day thing. Just violation - suspended. Can you provide a link?

Re:Typical Slashdot Sensationalism

[syousef]

So you think it's no problem because you have 5 business days to respond?

Have you ever taken a vacation? Have you ever gone away for more than 5 days?

Tool.

Re:Typical Slashdot Sensationalism

[mshiltonj]

> So I guess the moral of the story is, don't get caught, or don't use the schools network to download your movies

Or: Go to a different school.

Re:Typical Slashdot Sensationalism

[Antique Geekmeister]

I'd actually like to see this happen. If a law is stupid, or regulation is untenable, show very early the main flaws and make sure that it's unenforceable. Also provide grounds for saying "you didn't kick these 200 people after one complaint, you can't justify doing it to me without at least verification of the legitimacy of the copyrights involved".

Re:Typical Slashdot Sensationalism

[Skapare]

There are a few things fundamentally wrong with what you are pointing out.

First of all, by calling this an appeal, it already presumes "guilt by accusation" (by a third party which already has a well known reputation of making meritless claims). Where's the due process in this?

Only 5 days to prepare an appeal ... or even an initial defense? That is just utterly stupid. That would be stupid even as a limit for merely filing a notice of intent to defend.

It's one thing for the University to knee-jerk and just assume you are guilty upon receiving a notice that merely has a reference to an IP address and time that their records indicate you were using, and cut off your access until such time as you make a claim that something is wrong and proceed with steps to defend. But to completely cut off all avenues of defense and appeal in such a short time frame? That's what's really wrong here.

I do believe that the majority of students who will be facing this probably are guilty. But as we have seen, there are times when things go wrong. The RIAA is well known to have simply not checked their evidence at all, and crank out these pre-litigation letters like a spammer cranks out sex pill offers.

And universities are a place where absolute security of who is using which IP address when has not been considered that important of an issue. These methods are not cryptographically secure, and are easy to crack. MAC addresses can be faked (works especially well when the computer that really has that MAC address is off). So what method does U of K use to ensure there is absolutely no way possible for someone who is stealing unauthorized copyrighted content to fake someone else's MAC address? This is not a high-tech leader school here.

I take it you have not been to a college/university computer lab lately. If you can even get the junk computers to work right, and run the OS you need, is it even convenient at all (e.g. open 24 hours a day, and always has enough seats for all the needs).

While a bit draconian, at least Ohio University and Stanford have solutions that treat the "innocent until proven guilty" fairly. The University of Kansas would make Adolf Hitler proud.

Re:Typical Slashdot Sensationalism

[Skapare]

I could understand your counter-argument in many contexts. But for a notice issued during the academic term, students would generally not be taking vacation. Maybe if the notice was issued between semesters when the target of the notice was away. Possibly even during finals week. But there are plenty of good arguments against their process; this one just doesn't fly in this situation.

Re:Typical Slashdot Sensationalism

[Skapare]

This is a state funded school. Residents of the state should have equal and fair access. That should include due process when there is an accusation of wrong doing that would justify reduction or denial of access.

Will an innocent person who was not doing any infringement of copyright, but got caught up in the school's lack of due process, and was unable to investigate the failure of the school's insecure network to construct proof that they were innocent in the face of mere accusation of guilt (because someone else managed to crack the system and fake their MAC address), in just 5 business days ... get equivalent state financial funding to attend another school that doesn't have the kinds of draconian processes that would make Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein proud?

Re:Typical Slashdot Sensationalism

[SillyNickName]

Nice try, OverlordQ. Now let's take a look at the notice the article was actually about, shall we? From http://www.resnet.ku.edu/

Welcome to ResNet. We provide network connectivity, voice service and cable TV to the University's students, faculty and staff. Violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is against the law. If you are caught downloading copyrighted material, you will lose your ResNet privileges forever. No second notices, no excuses, no refunds. One violation and your ResNet internet access is gone for as long as you reside on campus.

No exactly what you quoted, now is it?

Re:Typical Slashdot Sensationalism

[OverlordQ]

Their DMCA Policy Page.

Re:Typical Slashdot Sensationalism

[syousef]

Ah I see,

So if your semester finishes early, or your grandfather dies it's cool that you're thrown off the network?

In any case what university did you go to. Some classes start and finish earlier or later for various reasons. Other advanced classes may require people to go for long trips (think of a geology student).

What you're saying is it doesn't affect you so you don't care. To say the least that's not nice. It's also bone headed because one day it may affect you or someone you care about.

Re:Typical Slashdot Sensationalism

[rastoboy29]

Dude, are you blind? The students have to prove their innocence. Prove they didn't do something. You know, prove a negative.

If you read the part you quoted more carefully, you'll see that.

Did they think this through?

[BillGatesLoveChild]

> The university's ResNet website states that, 'Violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is against the law. If you are caught downloading copyrighted material, you will lose your ResNet privileges forever. No second notices, no excuses, no refunds.

We've already seen that anyone outside the U.S can send a bogus DMCA takedown notice without penalty. Not often the US passes laws that prosecute Americans and give non-Americans free reign but there you go. Here are two recent cases showing how easy it is:

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897, 21563838-27317,00.html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_200 70329_001882.html

Now Kansas University has said they'll shut down students account if *anyone* sends a DMCA notice, with right of appeal. So if someone outside the US was to take the University's mailing list and generate a bogus DMCA notice for each one, the
entire University would voluntarily shut itself down. This hole in DMCA has been suggested before, so it's hardly new.

Who dreamed up this nonsense? Didn't they think it through to its logical conclusion? Don't Universities teach critical thinking? I mean, Double Duh.

Re:Did they think this through?

[TheGreatHegemon]

Which is why we should all send the University DMCA notices for the University of Kansas RESNET staff.

Re:Did they think this through?

[Pakaran2]

I want to see a Canadian business that, for $100 or so, sends takedown notices regarding each other student in a programming class graded on a curve.

Re:Did they think this through?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who dreamed up this nonsense? Didn't they think it through to its logical conclusion? Don't Universities teach critical thinking?

Well, it is Kansas after all...not exactly the most progressive or enlightenend of our fair states.

Re:Did they think this through?

[msromike]

The chances of "someone outside the US" sending a bogus email about everyone is so small as to be ridiculous. After the forum members nit pick the semantics of the policy, and then go through every ridiculous iteration or probability, there will be one logical conclusion.

Here is the apparent fact. The university is tired of the escalating number of complaints about users using their resources to steal content. The obvious conclusion will be, either don't steal music or plan on taking it like a man if you caught doing so.

Re:You aren't banned, the owner is distributing it

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the whole point that the GP poster was making though was that the way the policy is written(at least the quoted part if is is in context which I think it is), downloading of any copyright material is grounds for termination of network connection.
Doesn't mater that you have permission, you download copyright material, you loose privileges.

Yes, it is stupid, but let them make rules, and hopefully they will learn that it should be (I think at least, I'm no lawyer, ect)

If you are caught distributing copyrighted material(that has not yet entered the public domain) without permission of the owner(or their agent) via your ResNet connection, you will lose your ResNet privileges forever

Hmm...

[KitsuneSoftware]

I wonder how accurate their identification process is... we all know how easy it is to spoof your MAC address, after all. Also, for some twisted reason, I'm wondering how many banned students would need to make continuous WiFi requests for an effective internal DDOS.

Re:Hmm...

[rusty0101]

Are you presuming that all resnet connections are wifi? That would be pretty stupid. Site bandwidth would Suck.

Re:Hmm...

[KitsuneSoftware]

Also very cheap. And as (external) bandwidth costs money, they may think it's good to make the bandwidth suck.

Policy could affect research and study

[Cheesey]

Students often need to download copyrighted material to support their work. I wonder if Kansas U has considered the implications of their policy: if the RIAA can get you disconnected instantly for downloading an MP3, surely other publishers can do the same.

In my own work, I often have to fetch journal and conference papers from digital libraries, e.g. a good one. Often I will find a paper is not available to me because it isn't covered by my University's subscription, like many of the papers here or here. That situation is supposed to force a trip to the brick-and-mortar library (if it has the document), but sometimes you can find the paper online anyway, using a search engine. It might be on the author's website or Citeseer. Sometimes people seem to "accidentally" leave copies of papers where a search engine can find them. This is extremely helpful for a researcher, saving much time, and it is known that online articles are more likely to be cited.

However, except in special cases (e.g. the author has retained the copyright and distributed it for free), this is technically copyright infringement. The publishers want you to get everything through their paywall. That would be fine if everything was accessible, but the exhorbitant fees charged for full access by some organisations prevent that. Therefore, copyright infringement actually helps scientific research by allowing information to flow. At my University, nobody seems to notice (or care about) students digging up papers from elsewhere. But if the Kansas U management style spread here, a publisher could presumably get students instantly disconnected for "bypassing the paywall". You might lose your Internet connection -- for studying.

Is this close to a situation where research is actively inhibited by greed?

"The content you requested is not part of your subscription, please pay $30 to download this 10 page article".

Re:Policy could affect research and study

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm..I thought education facilities have larger fair use claims. DMCA doesn't place nice with fair use (practically).

Re:Policy could affect research and study

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that this case (KU) isn't about losing the entire Internet connectivity, just the convenient ResNet in the dorms; computer labs will be available regardless, as well as the KU email account and other Internet services.

(Otherwise I completely agree with you.)

Re:apes

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless slashdot removes the quoted post, slashdot is committing a criminal offence by European COE law. Racist posts are a criminal offence in Europe. The owner of the electronic message board has the legal responsibility of everything posted on the board, and an obligation to remove criminal posts. Thus, slashdot is committing a criminal offence in Europe.

It is just a matter of time before someone will file a report with the German or Swedish police and they will move to block slashdot like they are blocking other illegal racist sites.

The US is a signatory of the COE law.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/02/06/findlaw.analysis .ramasastry.cyberlaw/index.html

CommonCopyright

[headkase]

Copyright was fundamentally broken by the emergence of cheap, efficient, and world-wide broadband information networks. I don't even know where the best place would be to start reforming it. By my own preference I'd like to see a start with the restoration of fair-use rights including the right to modify something I've purchased. Moving your content among your own personal devices, lending your content to others for short periods, and other things such as removing copy protection from your software so you don't have to wear out your media were all legal when I was younger but now many of these actions are restricted or outright banned by legislation such as the DMCA.

Stop using that argument

[doyoulikeworms]

The argument that illegal downloading is OK if you, say, own the physical CD and it's too scratched to play, own the physical game cart, etc is just plain terrible. The problem with this is that you are aiding other people in their illegal activities by participating in a P2P network. You may very well have the right to download the content, but you certainly don't have the right to distribute it on the P2P network.

Re:Stop using that argument

[Aladrin]

You seem to have confused downloading with uploading. Who said ANYTHING about sharing the file with others? There's plenty of ways to download without uploading.

But that's immaterial, anyhow, as you have NO idea if the other person is doing it legally or not. I don't stop everyone I see on the street and verify that they are not an escaped criminal before I let them continue down the sidewalk, right? Even if that's not my duty, a police officer doesn't do that, either. Just because someone COULD be doing something illegal doesn't mean you should give a shit.

So tell me again why I shouldn't use the internet to replace that $50 game CD I lost? As a perfect example, I lost my Persona disc for PSX. On EBay, that disc goes for anywhere from $50 to $100. I think I only paid $40 originally, and I don't think I should have to pay that much to replace it. The company won't replace it, as the game is out of print. I'll be damned if I'll just suck it up and accept the loss. That's one of my favorite games of all time.

Re:Stop using that argument

[LinuxIsRetarded]

So tell me again why I shouldn't use the internet to replace that $50 game CD I lost? As a perfect example, I lost my Persona disc for PSX. On EBay, that disc goes for anywhere from $50 to $100. I think I only paid $40 originally, and I don't think I should have to pay that much to replace it. The company won't replace it, as the game is out of print. I'll be damned if I'll just suck it up and accept the loss. That's one of my favorite games of all time.

What a socially irresponsible attitude! What would you do if your $1000 Akita puppy ran away and never returned? Would you simply steal another one? After all, no one would replace him free of charge for you. And don't complain about the analogy, either. You are arguing in favor of stealing something to replace something you lost.

Just bite the bullet and accept that you lost your Persona disc and you can't get another one without paying for it. Then maybe next time you'll be a bit more careful with your possessions (or better yet, you'll simply realize that there are far more important things in life than material possessions).

Re:Stop using that argument

[Anonymous Coward]

>What would you do if your $1000 Akita puppy ran away and never returned?
Last time I checked puppies aren't copyable.

>You are arguing in favor of stealing something
To steal: to deprive someone of something without permission. Now if you argue I've deprived publisher of yet another $50 for that game, I've also deprived M$ of $400 profit for Vista by installing Linux.

You are a retard. Now STFU and GTFO.

Re:Stop using that argument

[Aladrin]

Yes, because depriving someone else of their pet is exactly the same thing as copying data off the internet.

Maybe if I somehow managed to clone their puppy, without for even a second depriving them of theirs, that might be a valid analogy. You'd still have to get over the legal ramifications of cloning, though, while making a backup copy of a CD is specifically allowed by the law. (Yes, I -did- make a backup copy by downloading it. The law does not specify how I should make that copy.)

Re:Stop using that argument

[poetmatt]

I find that hard to agree with Although it should have been backed up, he's not stealing anything. Locking of content is something that was originally "forbidden on CDs" and exactly the reason for why people get around the DMCA. I don't remember the exact conditions behind it but maybe someone else can help me out here. Oh wait, I think its called Fair Use. Dont' equate software with something physical either, those are different situations, putz. Downloading a copy of something you already own is different than stealing something physical (aka I lost my playstation I'll go steal someone's). Just because you lost your copy doesn't mean that the software in question is any less your property. Just because you lost your copy of XYZ most companies other than gaming systems will actually be able to provide you another copy if said software is registered. If your playstation is lost, will they reimburse you for it even if registered/xbox/etc? Nope.

Re:Stop using that argument

[Anonymous Coward]

"So tell me again why I shouldn't use the internet to replace that $50 game CD I lost? As a perfect example, I lost my Persona disc for PSX. On EBay, that disc goes for anywhere from $50 to $100. I think I only paid $40 originally, and I don't think I should have to pay that much to replace it. The company won't replace it, as the game is out of print. I'll be damned if I'll just suck it up and accept the loss. That's one of my favorite games of all time."

Because you can't, it's that simple. Someone richer and more powerful than you will ever be or can ever dream to be decided so, and made it illegal for you to do otherwise. Your loss is immaterial, what you think is irrelevant. Suck it up because there's nothing you can do.

Re:Stop using that argument

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"What a socially irresponsible attitude! What would you do if your $1000 Akita puppy ran away and never returned? Would you simply steal another one?"

That would be impossible to determine from the example he gave. Afterall, he didn't describe walking into a store or somebody's house and taking their copy.

"And don't complain about the analogy, either. You are arguing in favor of stealing something to replace something you lost."

He has paid for the content and he's looking for a dupe that will cost no more to the company that produced said content. Your definition of 'stealing' makes me think you're channeling the spirit of Jack Valenti.

"(or better yet, you'll simply realize that there are far more important things in life than material possessions)."

So you're saying that if I stole your $1000 Akita puppy, you'd be okay with it because you have your health? And don't complain about the anology, either. You're arguing that a company can 'steal' from you to replace content you've already licensed.

Re:Stop using that argument

[Anonymous Coward]

Just bite the bullet and accept that you lost your Persona disc and you can't get another one without paying for it.

You stupid, stupid asshole -- you're just swallowing the corporate line of shit whole. Federal law explicitly specifies your right to make backup copies for your own use. But the bastard game and music vendors want to deprive you of the ability to exercise your right to do so.

Similarly, the right of first sale explicitly allows you to do whatever you want with a product you've purchased, excluding, obviously, things which are illegal in their own right, e.g. violating copyright (as with CDs) or running people down (as with cars). Otherwise you can do what you want with the product, including, but not limited to, shredding it, photographing it in a vat of your own piss or selling it to a fiend, while making sure you retain no working copies.

But the bloody IP fucks want to deprive you of even those minimal rights by requiring registration which ties a specific copy of the product to a single machine or format.

These are the same kind of blood-sucking leeches who would destroy the American free public library system (possibly our most significant contribution to world culture) for their own pusillanimous profit motives.

Don't laugh -- book publishers tried to do exactly that when libraries started becoming common. And it is historical fact that Hollywood IP holders tried to find ways tp prevent people from having unauthorized (that is, non-TV-owning) friends or relatives coming over to view programs or movies which were to be deemed (in their craven view) to be transmitted only for viewing by actual owners of TVs.

So they ply lawmakers with all sorts of "incentives" to guarantee that potential abuse does not become actual abuse, by imposing restrictions on any technology which might, however unlikely be used to deprive them of a nickel of their ill-gotten gains.

In this regard, I can only quote Thomas Aquinas -- Abuse does not take away use.

And while you're at it, your excessive bolding can not ever make copyright violation equal to stealing. If you're going to practice law on Slashdot, it behooves you to learn a little of it first, at least to the extent of learning the distinction between basic, mutually exclusive terms.

Re:Stop using that argument

[Anonymous Coward]

Just bite the bullet and accept that you lost your Persona disc and you can't get another one without paying for it.

Well, aren't you the perfect picture of the strict Calvinist parent? "You spilled your milk, so you just leave the table. You're not getting anything more to eat until breakfast."

Quit swallowing the corporate cum, you filthy little slut

Re:Yeah, it's titled, Thou Shall Not STEAL !!

[Anonymous Coward]

ONE: 'Thou shall have no other gods before Me.'
How 'bout no god at all then?

TWO: 'Thou shall not make for thyself a carved image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.'
Obligatory nonsense?

THREE: 'Thou shall not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain.'
Goddamnit why god damn hell not?

FOUR: 'Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy (that goez for you too ozzy).'
Friday? Saturday? Sunday? God! I hate Mondays. Wednesdays are not so great, either.

FIVE: 'Honor thy father and thy mother.'
I win one!

SIX: 'Thou shall not murder.'
I take it you don't like George Bush much? Or hell, millions of your children.

SEVEN: 'Thou shall not commit adultery.'
How about I do but become catholic, confess my sin, and move on?

EIGHT: 'Thou shall not steal.'
Riiiight. Big corporations are all corporationy anyway so I am justified. Strike me dead now if you disagree.

NINE: 'Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.'
Why would I? I'm doing his wife AND daughters, and plus, I have all his power tools.

TEN: 'Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's house; Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is thy neighbor's.'
Send me to hell now then, because I'm a bad, bad boy.

Re:Yeah, it's titled, Thou Shall Not STEAL !!

[ajs318]

OK. Theft is defined as unlawfully taking something that belongs to another person, with intent permanently to deprive them of it. The important words being "deprive" and "permanently" (which is why it's a valid defence if you knew or had reason to believe that the person intended to destroy the article, since in effect you are only temporarily depriving them of it for the time it would have taken them to destroy it, after which they wouldn't have it anyway).

Now we've got the definition out of the way, please tell me: What is it that someone will not have after you download a copy of a piece of music, that they did have before you downloaded it (the "deprive" bit) and there is no way for them to get back (the "permanent" bit)?

So, the next front in the fight?

[DusterBar]

If you are caught downloading copyrighted material, you will lose your ResNet privileges forever

So, I guess this is the next step in the fight against open source - make any download of copyrighted material illegal. Given the statement, a literal quote from TFA, there is little that one can do with respect to downloading.

Ok, that was supposed to be funny but now that I look at it, that statement really does seem to say something rather silly...

Re:So, the next front in the fight?

[Sam Nitzberg]

Isn't anything generated by an author (typically) copyright of that author- even if the author didn't file for copyright protection - unless otherwise assiged?
Accessing almost any web site or page would result in a technical violation.

Re:Yeah, it's titled, Thou Shall Not STEAL !!

[VagaStorm]

>> EIGHT: 'Thou shall not steal.'
>> Riiiight. Big corporations are all corporationy anyway so I am justified. Strike me dead now if you disagree.


Gues we won't be hearing from him again :p

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Kansas University engineering department reports mysterious drop in freshman enrollment for the fall 2008 semester...

IT policy at U of Kansas is generally clueless

[ibn_khaldun]

The IT "services" at KU are clueless in general, not just with this, and they consistently appear to have mistaken their windowless cubicles for Olympus/Valhalla. Over the last ten years they have periodically gone through phases of issuing draconian policies, only to find them unenforceable. My favorite (though by no means only) example was a policy that anyone caught writing down a password (passwords, of course, were required to be changed every 42 minutes, contain Mayan glyphs, etc) could be fired. Never enforced, much to the disappointment of local lawyers. They went through another phase of barging into faculty offices and imaging disks, except they would get the office numbers incorrect and leave the faculty member with an inoperable machine. And sometimes really picked the wrong office... The individuals involved are no longer in our employ, as the saying goes (and were last seen staked to the ground near an anthill, I believe...)

Two or three mistaken enforcements of this -- yes, that will happen with near certainty given past experience -- and the effect of this will be simply to drive students out of the dorms. Someone with an ounce of clue (necessarily, outside of ITS) will figure that it is a whole lot cheaper to stonewall the RIAA on most cases than to deal with the cost of empty rooms, the policy will be quietly dropped, and IT will go in search of something else they can screw up.

Re:IT policy at U of Kansas is generally clueless

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

Nicely put. I particularly enjoyed ". . . and they consistently appear to have mistaken their windowless cubicles for Olympus/Valhalla." I hope it's okay if I use that :).

Re:IT policy at U of Kansas is generally clueless

[Skapare]

Nicely put. I particularly enjoyed ". . . and they consistently appear to have mistaken their windowless cubicles for Olympus/Valhalla." I hope it's okay if I use that :).

You better be careful. Read the notice on all Slashdot pages:

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster.

So don't you think you ought to get permission first, especially if you are residing in University of Kansas dorms? :-)

Re:IT policy at U of Kansas is generally clueless

[Anonymous Coward]

KU has always had a disdain for computer sciences. I remember a couple of bad mistakes they made in the early 90's. The first was closing down the Computer Science department and moving it into the Engineering/Math departments. The second was the dean bought every internet book in the campus bookstore to prevent the students from learning about the internet. It was these conditions, along with a lot of stock options, that Marc Andreessen was able to lure KU students on the Mosaic project to become Netscape founders.

Re:IT policy at U of Kansas is generally clueless

[Anonymous Coward]

My bad, it was Lynx not Mosaic

Re:IT policy at U of Kansas is generally clueless

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

Thanks, LOL. I don't actually reside at KU, but sympathize with the students. Of course all res nets are like this -- most have more of a velvet glove around the iron fist, though.

Reversed burden of proof?

[smurfsurf]

So *you* have to proof you did nothing wrong? What will they considered sufficient "documentation supporting your appeal"? What *can* you write? "During that time, I was surfing the web, reading news sites, I have no idea why they would accuse me of downloading X"? What use does it have anyway?

If you say you did the claimed things, you will get your access suspended and later sued by the copyright holder.
If you say you did not do the claimed things (if true or not), you will get your access back and later sued by the copyright holder nonetheless.

This provision is still open for a DOS on all the students. File reports on all of them, and the whole student body has their boxes disconnected for five days. Or stack it over a period of time to create "disconnection waves" for parts of the student. Keeps them frightend about who will not be able to work from their computer this week.

This is just stupid.

Mush Heads

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if the mush headed students who are there to GET AN EDUCATION were to STOP DOWNLOADING COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL then it wouldn't be an issue? Buy the fucking movie/song/porn/whatever and stop being freeloaders.

Re:Mush Heads

[some old guy]

Get an education? I thought only students from Asia and India did that! After all, isn't college just an extension of the big high school party with better access to drugs, alcohol, and broadband wireless? Post-graduate workplace performance would tend to confirm this. Foreign student and worker visas would be unnecessary if more American kids would 1)pursue degrees in high-demand majors, e.g. engineering and the physical sciences, and 2)actually apply themselves to the pursuit. Oh, wait, I forgot...smart isn't cool and work isn't fun. My mistake. Relevant question for statistical analysis: How many burgers do we have to eat to keep the Class of 2007 off of Unemployment?

Re:Mush Heads

[Grimbleton]

Because students must focus on education 24/7, with zero downtime! That is the only way the world may work! No student EVER relaxes, EVER!

Students tend to be one step ahead...

[Entropius]

I wouldn't be surprised if signs saying only "tor.eff.org" start appearing around campus...

Re:Students tend to be one step ahead...

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

I'm sure a school with their content cartel friendly police state IT policies probably blocks the TOR entry nodes.

Re:Students tend to be one step ahead...

[Entropius]

I imagine the school IT department itself doesn't much care about filesharing, if they've got the bandwidth to soak it up; if they don't, they can go after students for excessive transfer no matter what they're doing.

Besides, is there a comprehensive list anywhere of the Tor entry points? Couldn't some students at a sympathetic university simply set up their own entry nodes and not publicize them except to the UK students?

Either way, Tor forces them to play a very expensive and difficult game of whack-a-mole. What's next, banning encrypted communications out of the dorms?

Re:Students tend to be one step ahead...

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

IT departments acting like KU's contain at least one control freak (who probably was the force behind selling the policy described in the article to the administration). You know, the "I know what's running over MY network" types that don't like being denied the ability to snoop and would ban encryption if they could.

There is a DNS blacklist which lists all TOR nodes, entry and exit. The nodes are also published here. This means TOR can be blocked for all but those who can hop their traffic over an outside connection no matter whether it's running on a non-standard port.

Students at another university could set up alternate entry points, but I don't expect this to happen for two reasons. First, the students at the other university's resnet aren't likely to be able to accept incoming connections, as those networks are typically heavily firewalled. Second, even if they could accept traffic, they aren't likely to want to answer to the "network police" on their campus about their use of TOR. The universities who would not tolerate this kind of network fascism (e.g. MIT) don't have the resources to offer proxying service to other whole universities and even if they did would find those entry points blocked as well.

Because the TOR nodes are all published, it is easy to block TOR even when it running over port 443. Even if the nodes weren't published, the idea that a network administrator would have to block all encrypted traffic including https to block it is not true--an outbound filter can verify an SSL handshake is actually taking place and block the connection otherwise.

Regrettably, the ability to block TOR for all but the technically savvy with off-campus resources (e.g. proxy through a home broadband connection) is well in their hands. With the ability to punish anyone whom they find working around the blocks (even if just by making them aware they're being closely watched), I don't expect KU to see a sudden spike in TOR usage. It would be nice, though, if the students resisted.

Either it's flamebait or you're stupid

[Nicolas MONNET]

Copywritten is not a word. Even in bold.

And then, even if you meant "copyrighted", it still would be a completely stupid thing to say. As as been pointed earlier, per the Berne convention, everything is copyrighted. See, this message you're reading now, and which you have therefore downloaded, is copyrighted by me.

So right now, I'm calling your ISP and having your account cancelled.

Re:Either it's flamebait or you're stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

> As as been pointed earlier, per the Berne convention, everything is copyrighted.

You've hit the nail on the head!

It's impossible, in normal browsing, to avoid downloading copyrighted material. You always have to assume that the person providing the material has the legal right to do so. It should never be up to the recipient to determine the legality of the transfer. What are you supposed to do, write to the domain holder of the site and demand proof of ownership of everything on their site? What about internet radio? You have no way to tell who is 'authorized' to broadcast copyrighted music and who is not.

That's the difference between this and file sharing... When you share a song, book, or movie, you are implicitly asserting that you have the right to do so under the law. This is why uploaders should be held responsible for copyright infringement, never downloaders

Apparently not

[dgun]

Don't Universities teach critical thinking?

Violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is against the law

So violating the law is against the law? Thanks to KU for clearing that up.

Is this censorship?

[Anonymous Coward]

This feels like censorship (at the least it is a draconian rule). After all, censorship is becoming America's favorite past-time. The US gov't (and their corporate friends), already detain protesters, ban books like "America Deceived" from Amazon and Wikipedia, shut down Imus and fire 21-year tenured, BYU physics professor Steven Jones because he proved explosives, thermite in particular, took down the WTC buildings. Free Speech forever (especially for colleges).
Last link (before Stark County District Library caves to pressure and drops the title):
America Deceived (book)

Re:Yeah, it's titled, Thou Shall Not STEAL !!

[LaughingCoder]

Actually, theft is not defined that way at all. There is no mention of intent or permanance (at least in dictionary.com). Stealing is merely defined as "the taking the property of others without permission". Downloading certainly meets this definition. The real issue is that we have a language and a set of laws which evolved when things of value were physical and not easily/perfectly copied. The reality is, as currently defined by the law, downloading copyrighted material without the copyright holder's permission is theft. It seems to me that we need to change the laws to adapt them to the new realities, not just blatantly disobey them because we think they are wrong, unfair or inconvenient. "Fair Use" was one attempt at this, but that law pre-dated the internet, which made it orders of magnitude easier to "share". DMCA also addresses the issue, but I think most around here would agree that it is a poor attempt. Clearly there is much more work to be done - and of course it is a moving target as technology marches on.

Re:apes

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

Good luck with that.

Re:Yeah, it's titled, Thou Shall Not STEAL !!

[Oligonicella]

Well, that's easy. They lose their right to control distribution of their copyrighted material. Nor can they get it back, as you have the material already. That's what copyright is about, you know. They own the right to decision, not you. You took that right away from them. Got it?

Single-family residence != university residence

[tepples]

I'm not sure exactly what you think you're getting 'privacy' from, but you know that your ISP looks at the MAC address of your Cable/DSL modem, and not that of your network card, right? This article is not about ISPs that serve single-family residences. It is about ISPs that serve university residences. Unlike single-family residences, university residences tend to run CAT5/CAT6 cable with 8P8C modular connectors (same kind on the back of your NIC) to each room.

What did you expect?

[HangingChad]

This is the state that wants to teach creationism in the classroom. This type of no tolerance = no intelligence policy is completely in keeping their right wing, my way or highway mentality.

Some remind me why secession was such a bad idea.

Re:What did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kansas would have gone north.

Re:What did you expect?

[mdmkolbe]

> This type of no tolerance = no intelligence policy ...

Wait, you mean all those zero-tolerance(*) laws are bad things?

Oh, I get it! No tolerance = bad; zero tolerance = good. I guess I'm going to have to brush up on my newspeak.

(*) New York (Drinking and Driving) www.nysgtsc.state.ny.us/zero-tol.htm
California (Guns in Schools) www.cde.ca.gov/ls/ss/se/zerotolerance.asp
etc., etc., etc.

Re:You aren't banned, the owner is distributing it

[schon]

When you copy music from someone that doesn't own the copyright, then theres a problem too. So.... you're claiming that Itunes owns the copyright on all their downloads?

not very workable in the long term

[moxley]

My thinking on this is that:

1. This is clearly not well thought out. I believe it will become a real problem for the school in several ways:

A. First, how are they going to determine who is responsible for downloading something, (IE who was actually at the computer)?

B. Once they do, what about the other students who share the room? Are they SOL?

C. What about the student's classes? I am sure the net is quite integral, so basically they are removing a learning/research/interaction tool which I would say is necessary in today's collegiate environment.

D. Also, with the money students (more likely parents) are paying for a dorm and related - (including resnet or whatever) you can bet the school will be sued.

E. When checking out prospective universities, something like this is going to turn off a lot of kids - I know if I were considering schools I would cross this school off of my list - notm only because of this policy itself, but because think it's an indicator of how this school's administration thinks, and how they feel about protecting the rights of their sztudents.

F. Are they monitoring the students usage, or only responding to letters?

G. My guess is that the RIAA/MPAA got the school to take this ridiculously hard line. It seems likely to me that there may have been some sort of bribe or coercion here - either they are offering the school (or someone who has the authority to do this at the school) something, or threatening to remove something.

When you consider all of these things and how they will negatively impact the school and it's image, it seems to me that this isn't going to work. I could be wrong, but it just seems too drastic.

Re:not very workable in the long term

[AusIV]

I've found that lots of people don't seem to know how universities manage their connections. Now, I'm not certain that this is how KU handles connections, but I know of a few universities that use similar systems.

At my school, when you first plug a computer into the campus network, it uses a proxy to force you to a "keyhole" page, where you must log in with a campus username and password. The school pairs your login information with your mac address. You can have multiple computers and multiple mac addresses registered, but they're all linked to your login information. If you get your connection taken away, they not only bock the mac address the offense came from, but also block any other mac address associated with the offending user, and prohibit the offending user from registering another mac address. Now, at my school, you typically have to go to the IT office and apologize to get your connection turned back on - nothing nearly as draconian as what KU is putting into place - but I would be very surprised if other people in the room are unaffected.

Re:not very workable in the long term

[Anonymous Coward]

A. First, how are they going to determine who is responsible for downloading something, (IE who was actually at the computer)?

          It actually doesn't matter who was on the computer. Each user agrees to a responsible use agreement that states that any activity on their computer is their responsibility.

B. Once they do, what about the other students who share the room? Are they SOL?

          The internet registrations at KU are actually done per computer. So, as long as the roommates aren't sharing the computer there is no impact.

C. What about the student's classes? I am sure the net is quite integral, so basically they are removing a learning/research/interaction tool which I would say is necessary in today's collegiate environment.

          There's a bunch of labs/libraries on campus not to mention roommates computers. It doesn't cripple a student, it's just a big pain in the ass.

D. Also, with the money students (more likely parents) are paying for a dorm and related - (including resnet or whatever) you can bet the school will be sued.

          Sued? But under what context? These kids are explicitly agreeing not to committ these crimes when they register for the internet.

E. When checking out prospective universities, something like this is going to turn off a lot of kids - I know if I were considering schools I would cross this school off of my list - notm only because of this policy itself, but because think it's an indicator of how this school's administration thinks, and how they feel about protecting the rights of their sztudents.

          Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I actually am surprised they aren't just charging ridiculous reconnection fees. KU's admin is money hungry.

F. Are they monitoring the students usage, or only responding to letters?

          It's a re-active system. I don't believe KU is capable of monitoring with the exception of general bandwidth.

G. My guess is that the RIAA/MPAA got the school to take this ridiculously hard line. It seems likely to me that there may have been some sort of bribe or coercion here - either they are offering the school (or someone who has the authority to do this at the school) something, or threatening to remove something.

        No idea.

not keep copies on your computer?

[nurb432]

How about changing that to "keep ENCRYPTED copies on your computer". Private property, no warrant, no searchie..

Encrypt all traffice so even if they can monitor traffic, all they get is garbage. And speaking of, when will all clients for *any* communication be it p2p or just instant messengers go with encryption of traffic? ( I know it doesnt stop the p2p issue of 'we see you have files shared' using a hacked client that records it for evidence, but it at least keeps the network guys out of your personal business.

Kick em All

[Derosian]

Someone needs to send an E-mail spoofed from the RIAA, to the administrator reporting almost all the students. See how they 'feel', about their policy then.

It is Kansas

[smchris]

They probably read it as Divine Millennial Creationism Act.

We've come a long way in my lifetime. I lived in a state college dorm that had a "don't hassle the marijuana users" policy in 1970. An RA lost his job for ignoring the dorm drug dealer when the college refused to accept his logic that the users wouldn't have anything to use without their dealer. Remember that the DMCA applies to using libdvdcss to watch a legally acquired DVD on linux. So an RA could be aiding and abetting a felon for failure to narc on a guy watching his DVD collection on linux.

Preponderance != reasonable doubt

[tepples]

However, [a ROM dumped from a Game Pak and a ROM downloaded from the Internet] are utterly indistinguible and the law demands proof beyond reasonable doubt.

Copyright infringement is more often prosecuted as a civil violation rather than a criminal violation. The standard in civil cases is preponderance (51%) of evidence, not proof beyond reasonable doubt. If the defendant cannot provide a shred of evidence that he or she has had access to a game copier (which by the way is not sold in U.S. retail stores or on eBay), then the defendant cannot reasonably invoke a defense under 17 USC 117.

Re:Baby Meet Bathwater-MOD UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said.

Who is the rightful author?

[tepples]

If you have the copyright holder's permission. I think they should talk to some real lawyers before writing these notices! Even with the help of competent counsel, that might be difficult. Because copyright vests initially in a work's authors, determining copyright ownership starts with determing authorship. But if I write a song, who is the rightful author? Am I the rightful author, or is the songwriter whose decade-old song I may have accidentally copied parts from (see the "My Sweet Lord" case) the rightful author?

Re:You aren't banned, the owner is distributing it

[asuffield]

You are right that if you take their wording literally then its funny, but there is either implicit consent to copy from the owner because they are distributing it or it can be explicitly given in a license e.g. GPL software.

It's not "funny", it's "obviously designed for selective interpretation and enforcement". This policy has quite clearly been written in a way that gives users no information about what behaviour is acceptable and the administration an excuse to ban anybody for just about anything. Even if you assume that there is nothing wrong with the copyright system as it stands, disputes about what forms of infringement are legal are common and expected - and the university has just set themselves up to arbitrarily ban users when a large corporation decides to make an accusation of unlawful infringement, even if that accusation holds no weight, would lose in court, and in fact is never even taken to court.

This is not about right, wrong, law, justice, fairness, or anything like that. This is about one company (the university) offering to enforce arbitrary rules made up by another company (any media company), and in the process bypass the legal system entirely.

Still requires discovery

[Skapare]

This still requires discovery. The university expects students who did not actually do any infringement to figure it out, in 5 business days, without being able to investigate the real source of error? That's not an appeal. That's just stupidity.

The first rule:

[Virgil Tibbs]

The first rule of copyright infringement: Don't get Caught.

Re:You aren't banned, the owner is distributing it

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't claim anything about ITunes. I was talking about individuals exchanging music files who in all likelyhood don't have the permission of the copyright holder to distribute their work. ITunes obviously does and they pay the rights holder a cut of sales.

I did say you can be given permission to distribute others copyright in both the bits you didn't quote.

Why such a surprise?

[QuietLagoon]

This is from the State University of a state that outlawed evolution in favor of creationism.

Re:Why such a surprise?

[Pakaran2]

I really doubt that's still in effect (especially since, while not a precedent, there's a district court decision elsewhere specifically stating that intelligent design is not scientific, is religious, and can't be taught in the public schools).

Re:Why such a surprise?

[QuietLagoon]

It's not still in effect, but the people of Kansas tried to do it. That was my point - you cannot expect too much from a state that actively avoids education.

As a hiring manager, I would definitely be very skeptical of people "educated" in Kansas.

Boycott the network

[Anonymous Coward]

This happened once where I was studying, and the result was a rally of all students against the draconian rules. Stop using the university Internet connection. Switch to e-mail addresses hosted elsewhere. Make a collect, raise enough money for a subscription to a different provider, and plug the dorm wires to them. Find enough wireless APs (come on, a lot of you have one), daisy chain them and extend connectivity. I expect a lot of other solutions can be found by some determined (read: pissed off) geeks. And when the university officials will notify a 0 usage of their network, serious questions will be asked, parents will show demanding explanations, etc.

Easy Solution

[Rhyas]

Don't go to KU. Several things influence decisions on what schools to go to, this one would rank very highly on my list of reasons NOT to attend KU.

Re:Easy Solution

[SETIGuy]

Don't go to KU. Several things influence decisions on what schools to go to, this one would rank very highly on my list of reasons NOT to attend KU.

It's a good idea to avoid Kansas entirely. Most Kansans know that computers are an instrument of the devil anyway. Merely touching one might make you believe in evolution.

Note to the sane person to leave: remember to turn out the lights. They can have the dark ages...

Re:Easy Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Some remind me why secession was such a bad idea.

What shit -- you (and other respondents) act as though you read and confer with a lawyer on all campus policies, rules, etc. In fact, many have a school chosen for them simply on the basis of what they can afford.

Most students can't afford to have the school send a copy of everything they'll be expected to sign to the family lawyers (on retainer, of course) to scan for anything that might conflict with the young master's continued enjoyment of his pampered lifestyle.

And those who can sure as shit aren't considering attending KU.

Re:You aren't banned, the owner is distributing it

[Fastolfe]

How can you tell, though? You have to have faith that the site/service you're downloading from is authorized to redistribute it. Rather than going after those sharing the materials, the notice would seem to target the downloaders. If I were a student there, does that mean I'm on the hook for verifying that everything I'm about to download is being offered with the permission of the copyright holder? This seems like a large, arbitrary burden to place on consumers of Internet content.

It's possible that they're actually going after those redistributing content, not merely downloading it, since the RIAA has largely succeeded in confusing people into thinking those terms mean the same thing, but who knows?

The Easy Solution?

[morari]

Don't attend a university. Don't waste your time and money on college just so you can wag a little piece of paper around in front of so-called employers saying "Look, I'm in debt too, I must be an upstanding member of society and am very likely to be hired... Just wait until I'm in even more debt from that ranch house and brand new car! You'll just have to hire me then because all of that debt will give me great credit ratings, plus I'll look sooo cool out in my twenty square foot yard on my super expensive riding lawnmower twice a week! Praise be America, all hail imaginable money!"

Re:The Easy Solution?

[Lurker2288]

Okay, but what's the alternative? Forget college, go straight to work, and over time develop marketable skills? That's reasonable, but what about the fact that most employers don't even want to look at you if you haven't got a degree? What kind of options (or, once I'm hired, how much upward mobility) do I have without that little piece of paper?

One of my good friends right now dropped out of college after a year and he's gone on to be ridiculously successful, far moreso than anyone I know who actually graduated. But not everybody has his brilliance/determination/background; for those folks, not having a degree can be really crippling. So, while it may be crooked, for a lot of folks it may be the only game in town.

Re:The Easy Solution?

[qdaku]

Depends on what you want to do at the end. Some professions require a rather rigorous degree that is held to standards. Try becoming a civil engineer without a degree. It's just not going to happen. I suppose you COULD technically do it on your own but they would, at some point, require you to take some competency exams and I don't think they would be all that easy. Particularly in fields such as mine where textbooks do not really exist that cover the material. It's up to the professors experience and some key fundamental papers. Not such an easy thing to do. You would also have a damn difficult time getting a job. Maybe we are snobs, but getting hauled up in court (common in geological engineering) and stating that someone doing engineering works is not an engineer --well you'd be up shit creek.

Re:Do be careful

[skoaldipper]

Does the University of Kansas have a lot of legacy-admits?

You mean like people over 50?

[ Charles takes notice of a peculiar looking elderly gentleman sitting next to him... ]

Charles: "Hi. Are you a professor or something?"
Johnny: "HaHa. No way daddy-o! First year fish myself. How about that Dolly two rows down? She's a real wheelie, ain't she."

[ Johnny leans over, nudges Charles in the shoulder, and drops his voice a bit... ]

Johnny: "By the way, I got some really cool mp3 beats to lay on ya. It'll razz your berries, man."
Charles: "Uh. No, thanks. You know - one strike, you're out."
Johnny: "Don't be such a square, man. I won't tell anyone one one ONEeEEEEEEEEEAKRaaaEEIEEEE!!."

[ Just then, a high pitched reverbing echo screams out from the inside of Johnny's bermuda shirt. ]

Johnny: "Sorry about that. I was, uh, just taking notes..."

[ Johnny gets up and quickly heads for the back door... ]

bully behaviour..

[LingNoi]

According to a KU spokesperson, KU has received 345 notices in the past year from organizations and businesses regarding complaints about copyrighted material downloading.

If they had not been so accommodating to the RIAA and MPAA the first time around then they wouldn't be inundated with requests from them now. When the bully knows he can hurt the kid without any consequences then they keep coming back until the victim turns around and punches him in the nose.

Thats not to say the MPAA or RIAA can't legally do what they are doing but they are only doing it because they know the University is going to bend over backwards to serve them. The university should be protecting the students not siding with ultra massive corporations. What kind of message does that serve.

Re:bully behaviour..

[Anonymous Coward]

... backwards ....

Wrong direction.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

No problem, steal another student's password.

[EWAdams]

Good way to hose somebody else permanently. On the other hand, a good way to hose this stupid system would be for a large number of students to all make their passwords publicly available, thereby making it impossible to prove exactly which student did the downloading.

Re:No problem, steal another student's password.

[fishbowl]

"Copyrighted material" includes huge amounts of work that are expressly allowed to be distributed. On this point alone, the rule could be challenged.

But then, somebody whose safety schools took them all the way down to Kansas, and who can't even afford to live off campus *there*, has enough problems.

Re:You aren't banned, the owner is distributing it

[Anonymous Coward]

The context is before the bit that you mentioned and it says:

Violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is against the law. Then it says:

If you are caught downloading copyrighted material, you will lose your ResNet privileges forever. To me this says downloading copyright material in a way that violates the DMCA will result in termination of your ResNet privileges. Obtaining permission to distribute and then distributing is not against the DMCA, so is allowed. That's why I said its funny if you take that bit literally. Some further context is provided by the KU ResNet Responsible Use Agreement.

I agree to respect the rights of copyright owners, and, when appropriate, obtain permission from owners before using or copying protected material, including, but not limited to, music, movies, software, documents, images, and multimedia objects. And below that:

I understand that if I receive a copyright violation notice that my ResNet service will be de-activated, there will be no refund of ResNet fees and that I will be unable to use ResNet for the duration of my stay in the Residence Halls. It also seems like there is an investigation process for violations and that the copyright violation notice in itself does not result in service termination.

Well we've never heard from him in the first place

[FatSean]

...oh, you meant the poster?

Everything

[Alchemar]

The problem I see with this policy is that just about everything you could possibly download is copyrighted. By reading this post, you have downloaded copyrighted material. Scroll to the bottom of the page if you want to read the copyright notice. By automatically banning a student for downloading copyrighted material, you either have to ban everyone or this is something that the administration can use to pick and choose for what, for who, and when they enforce it.
 
  Now lets say they really meant downloading copyrighted material illegally. Then it needs to be determined if it is fair use before they are banned. It is legal to use copyrighted material for educational purposes, and portions of copyrighted material for reporting type use. There are a lot of cases of people trying to enforce copyright, and the courts saying "NO" for reasons of abuse by the copyright holder or fair use on behalf of the suspected infringer, so just getting a letter from someone claiming you did not have their permission should not be taken as the final say.

    If they want to ban someone for unacceptable downloading of copyrighted material, they need to have a system setup which details what is acceptable, and some kind of review to determine if a particular case was acceptable or not. There are still a lot of grey areas in copyright law, and that is why a no tolerance, no warning before punishment system is bad. Even better, if you see someone downloading something, give them and everyone else a warning that it is not acceptable to download that type of material and then add it to the list of banned downloads.

You don't need to list each peice of work, but need to be very specific in the details. "Downloading copyrighted songs" would be a very ridiculous rule. There are sites that play a tune as soon as you open them. "Downloading recorded music that is still under copyright laws of the United States or other countries which the United States has copyright treaties in affect without the permission of the copyright holder for commercial or personal use is a bannable offense". The "personal use" is a small but very important phrase. If I am using it as part of a research paper, that is not for my personal use. If someone else has it autoload as part of their website, it is not for personal use. This is just a crude example, this is something that would have to be written by a lawyer. When you make rules that have no warnings and no chance for clarification after the fact, then you make it a neccessity to clear up all the loopholes upfront.

Re:Yeah, it's titled, Thou Shall Not STEAL !!

[webrunner]

Taking and copying are different things.

Plus, a copy of a song is not intellectual property, the song itself is. You are not taking their rights to the song. You're going against those rights, but you dont gain any rights to the song when you download it.

Re:Yeah, it's titled, Thou Shall Not STEAL !!

[brassman]

"What is it that someone will not have after you download a copy of a piece of music, that they did have before you downloaded it (the "deprive" bit) and there is no way for them to get back (the "permanent" bit)?"

Your money.

Okay, they didn't have your money yet, but you didn't have the music -- and you obviously want it, else you wouldn't have downloaded it.

So "your money" is a shorthand way of saying "A legitimate expectation that you would either buy from them or do without, which you have circumvented by illicit means that disregard a lawful copyright."

TFA is still f-cked up, though; if they're citing DMCA then 's/download/upload/' surely? Downloading is not a DMCA violation. Uploading might be.

Lawsuits

[Danathar]

Assuming some students are "well to do" and have $$$ from family or otherwise. If one of those students objects and says the college was wrong and he/she was NOT downloading unauthorized copyrighted material I'd expect some lawsuits.

If that's the way the college wants it, so be it. But there are some students and families who have the money and will have NO problem taking their complaints to court.

Remember, you can sue anybody for anything in the U.S.

That's a GOOD thing!

[cpghost]

It's all about education. Because today's students will be tomorrow's elites and even lawmakers, harassing them today will help shape their beliefs and awareness of how screwed the copyright system has become in DMCA-land. Once they have positions of influence, some of them will remember their college/U times, and help us get rid of all those mad laws. Because, frankly, the real problem today is that new students are starting to buy the MAFIAAs "copying is stealing" nonsense / myth; and that needs to be reverted, even if it becomes painful.

It's not really different from what happened to RMS at MIT! He too felt so harassed in his freedom to share information that he finally came up with a fantastic alternative. There would be no OSS today, had they been more liberal at MIT AI-lab back then.

So, for now, DMCA-like laws are a regal pain in the a**, but the more they hit prospective elites with it, the sooner they'll dissolve into nothingness once those elites come to power. It just takes some time, that's all. At least I hope so.

Re:THIS POST IS COPYRIGHTED

[RasputinAXP]

(-1, Pedant)

That's a key progression, not a melody, you insensitive clod!

what kind of dipshit goes to school in Kansas?

[Anonymous Coward]

'nuff said.

Re:You aren't banned, the owner is distributing it

[Anonymous Coward]

You are quite right that the notice targets downloaders.
See here http://www.dmca.ku.edu/

If the University of Kansas receives notice of a copyright violation ( downloading or uploading

copyrighted material including music, movies, games, software, etc.) tied to the IP address registered in your name, you will receive an email and written notice that your access to the ResNet Network has been temporarily suspended for 5 business days, during which time you may appeal if you believe the copyright infringement notice was received in error. In the case of someone downloading from ITunes when it was not authorised to distribute content, surely the bigger fish to fry is Apple and not the poor customer, but it seems from the wording above they can punish both. I suspect that in practise the customer would only be punished if they knew apple was infringing and still carried on purchasing like allofmp3 customers maybe?

Tap your shoes three times

[billcopc]

When supposed bastions of higher learning are overtly advocating suppression of rights and the veritable amputation of knowledge, it's time to start shopping for a new alma mater.

It's bad enough that universities sell your info to credit firms, telemarketers and foreign governments. Selling out to the DMCA abusers, while being a logical next step, is pretty much the last nail in the coffin. The greatest minds are those who aren't caged in by the artificial boundaries of corporate anti-culture.

Now I'm not advocating the free flow of copyrighted material on campus (at least, not in this post), but I believe the network admins should simply filter P2P traffic to the best (or least) of their ability, just for QoS reasons, and quietly enjoy their status of common carrier that they've always had. It is not the admins' job to defend someone else's copyrights. A million lawyers with a million DMCA laws might annoy the hell out of you, but there is nothing they can do against anyone but the actual person committing the crime. Don't let their money tell you otherwise.

profit in less than four years

[grapeape]

Create some fake torrents with names of whatever is hot at the moment
Share at max to run up the seed count
Wait for RIAA letter
Show that torrents are fake and claim you were doing your part to catch the bad guys
Sue School
Profit!

I think I see how to improve my grades

[ancientt]

Forget framing your roomie, the people you want to frame are the people who are messing up the curve. A lot of the classes I've taken were graded on a curve, so if the best performing students were having a bad day, my grade improved. (Assuming here that I wasn't the one at the top of the curve.)

So how do you improve your grades? Frame those who have the best grades. Even if they don't need the network access, even if they eventually prove themselves innocent, you can still pretty much be assured that dealing with the ban would cause them to lose focus. Time it so that they were dealing with it right when they'd be studying for the major exams otherwise.

No, this isn't a tatic limited to network access, but framing someone on a computer is much easier than many of the other possibilities. This rule just makes it easier and more beneficial, also probably safer, than other ways of distracting other students for improvement in your own grades.

Disclaimer: No, I've never done this, I'm simply pointing out the danger that I think was overlooked by school officials when they thought up this rule.

Re:I think I see how to improve my grades

[Fulcrum of Evil]

So how do you improve your grades? Frame those who have the best grades.

Why not just get them drunk and laid the night before? They might thannk you for it and, if they're like I was, most tests don't require focus anyways

Re:I think I see how to improve my grades

[illegalcortex]

Forget framing your roomie, the people you want to frame are the people who are messing up the curve. Don't worry. In the future, the smart ones are going to pick some other school when they find out about this policy.

That was a close one!

[bkgood]

I almost signed on to go to KU next semester.

Now the decision seems all the more intelligent.

Re:That was a close one!

[Creepy Crawler]

New Slogan:

If you go to KU, you'll need KY.

What happened to learning?

[Door-opening Fascist]

Isn't college supposed to be a nurturing, learning environment? I'm all for disciplinary action if the students act illegally, but this kind of removes all rehabilitation from the discipline. This only creates an environment of fear, and gives the university an opportunity for blackmail ("look kid, if you admit to some lesser crime, you won't permanently lose your net access").

If I were in the market for college now, I would write a polite (or maybe not even so polite) letter to their admissions department explaining why I'm taking my money to a more deserving school.

As an alumnus of this very school, let me answer

[Mycroft_514]

>A. First, how are they going to determine who is responsible for downloading something, (IE who was actually at the computer)?

This is the residence halls owned by the University. Max occupancy 2 people per room. They don't care about spillage.

>B. Once they do, what about the other students who share the room? Are they SOL?

Probably, see above.

>C. What about the student's classes? I am sure the net is quite integral, so basically they are removing a learning/research/interaction tool which I would say is necessary in today's collegiate environment.

Computer labs are still open to the student. Closest ones are not that far away, all within walking distance. (from all 8 dorms) When I was a student, we didn't even HAVE computers in the dorms.

>D. Also, with the money students (more likely parents) are paying for a dorm and related - (including resnet or whatever) you can bet the school will be sued.

This is a state school. The rich kids are either in single rooms, or more likely, live off campus in apartments. And you can't sue the state without permission from the state.

>E. When checking out prospective universities, something like this is going to turn off a lot of kids - I know if I were considering schools I would cross this school off of my list - notm only because of this policy itself, but because think it's an indicator of how this school's administration thinks, and how they feel about protecting the rights of their sztudents.

State school. The only school most of them can afford. The dorms have waiting lists as it is.

>When you consider all of these things and how they will negatively impact the school and it's image, it seems to me that this isn't going to work. I could be wrong, but it just seems too drastic.

You give their perception of their image WAY too much credence. They don't care because they can't house enough students NOW. What do they care if they lose some?

You are so busted

[rlp]

This comment © 2007 by the author. Hope you're not reading this in a University of Kansas dorm.

No it isn't

[Sycraft-fu]

I'm not sure where this idea that all, or even most, universities are private entities comes from. KU, like many universities, is a public school, meaning it is funded with public monies and thus beholden to the public. Public universities DON'T just get to make any rules they like. Sometimes they try, but these can be, and are, challenged in court.

So at a public school it isn't a case of "Our way or the high way." Sorry, but if you desire to receive public funding, you have to provide the public certain kinds of access.

If I was a student there, I would challenge the school's status as a monopoly provider of dorm Internet access. Public institutions have limited ways they are allowed to compete with the private sector, being partially government institutions. Now normally their control of Internet access in the dorms isn't an issue. However if they extremely curtail it and provide service to a much lesser level than commercial equivalents, I'd have a good case that they should have to let competition in.

This is different than with private schools, which are allowed to make rules nearly in any way they like. However a very large number of universities aren't private and thus don't get that right.

Re:No it isn't

[shmlco]

"I'd have a good case that they should have to let competition in."

Plenty of competition. Just plug in your POTS modem and download whatever you want... at 19.2 kbps.

Due process applies elsewhere

[Infonaut]

Tough luck pal, due process only applies in court.

There are two kinds of due process, the 5th Amendment kind and the 14th Amendment kind. The 5th applies to the US government and the 14th applies to the States. If a State deprives you of a right without due process, they run afoul of the 14th Amendement.

Duke is a private institution, but depending on how much funding it receives from the taxpayers of North Carolina, it could be considered to be fulfilling a state function. Public universities such as the University of California system are definitely state-funded institutions fulfilling a state function. So due process applies.

There are other examples. Any time the government allows (through contract or some other means) an entity to fulfill a vital state function, the potential for a due process argument exists. The rationale is that there is no other alternative, even though the state is not directly involved, so an absence of due process would be harmful to the rights of citizens.

We also

[Sycraft-fu]

Are talking about a process with NO PROOF whatsoever on the claimant. They make the claim, and suddenly students have to defend themselves. Ya THAT'S fair.

I mean suppose that I run a message board and a KU student regularly posts there and makes me look stupid. I get mad, but rather than banning them, I decide to be a real dick. I have their IP address, so I send in a fake DMCA notice, and I do this right around finals. So here's a student who's really busy, needs their net access, and suddenly they are in the middle of legal shit they had nothing to do with, all because I sent a fake letter.

What's worse is that it is unlikely anything could be done to me, even in the event the student was able to get enough information to prove that it was fake. If I'm not an American there's absolutely no recourse and even if I am, it would be a lot of work on the student's part to get me busted.

What HE said

[NickFortune]

I stand corrected :)

Thank you for the explanation.

Please explain

[Anonymous Coward]

why anyone would want to go to the University of Kansas, anyway.

idiots

[ND4SPDR]

Step 1: Buy a wireless router.
Step 2: Clone the MAC address of your friends computer.
Step 3: Enjoy your ResNet again.

Anyone who's friend with a nerd is not going to have to deal with this problem. And I certainly woudln't.

Re:idiots

[nnkx00]

Yeah, but nerds/geeks are still going to be the losers in the eyes of all the hot girls. Sorry buddy.

Re:idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but nerds/geeks are still going to be the losers in the eyes of all the hot girls.

The hot chicks will come crawling (or in any other desire position) when their macs have been cloned and they've lost access to the system.

Re:idiots

[Legion303]

Hot girls at U of K? Heh.

Re:Yeah, it's titled, Thou Shall Not STEAL !!

[miskatonic alumnus]

Actually, theft is not defined that way at all. There is no mention of intent or permanance (at least in dictionary.com). Stealing is merely defined as "the taking the property of others without permission". Downloading certainly meets this definition.

Wrong. It's not their property. They gave away their property in return for copyright.

Due Process Required at Public School ...

[AHumbleOpinion]

Cutting you off the campus net is an entirely private decision, no due process required by law.

That is not true if it is a public school. However, due process does not mean that a judge or the courts are involved, an administrative process by staff is allowed.

Priorities

[rben]

We got 12 million people without healthcare in this country and our Congress seems far more worried about protecting the RIAA than in solving problems that result in people dying.

We have some four thousand dead and who knows how many injured in a pointless war in Iraq, bu instead of dealing with an out-of-control President who thinks he's king, our Congress is protecting the RIAA by threatening college students.

I don't approve of illegal downloading. It's wrong, but it's not something that deserves this kind of attention from Congress. It's not something that should result in endangering the educational opportunities of a student the first time it happens. We've all done stupid things when we were in college.

Lets get our priorities straight here and tell the RIAA what they can do with themselves and tell our Congress to get to work on the real problems facing our country.

The jock will get more girls ...

[AHumbleOpinion]

Not only will he get booted off ResNet without recourse, but all the girls will think he's gay now when they look at his MP3 collection.

Without net access he will have more time for girls. Secondly, girls like gays, and since he is really straight they will get a tremendous ego boost as they misread reality and think they are turning a gay straight. Be prepared for more bumping and less sleep.

3 letters:

[null.account]

TOR

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the university of KANSAS for crying out loud, anyone dumb enough to think they can get a decent education there deserves whatever poorly thought out rules they get stuck with. Creationism... need I say more?

Re:Yeah, it's titled, Thou Shall Not STEAL !!

[canadian_right]

You are wrong, depending on where you live. In many countries with law based on English common law stealing is indeed defined as depriving someone of the use of their property.

You made a bigger mistake when you referred to a downloaded song as "property". You can't own a song, and it isn't property. You can own the Copyright which is a temporary privilege the government gives you to control who can copy the work in question. A copyright is NOT property.

Downloading songs is NOT theft. Downloading songs is still perfectly legal in many countries. In countries where downloading is illegal it still is NOT theft, it is copyright infringement. You are not stealing, you are breaking the rules regarding a government regulation regarding copying creative works.

Right to Read

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate it when RMS is right, but given that he wrote this about 10 years ago and described exactly this situation, it's hard not to take an I told you so. Personally I just thought he was taking things ludicrously far as usual, but now I stand corrected.

Worth reading at least. It's not about music, but this Univ of Kansas's decision can be applied to books just as well.

Fuck ResNet

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was in college, I _never_ used the campus network because it was slow, unreliable, filtered a fuckton of stuff, and didn't give anyone a public IP.

I had my own cable modem (with the account in my name) all four years of college, and I don't regret it. Kansas students should do the same thing.

or...

[commodoresloat]

So I guess the moral of the story is, don't get caught, or don't use the schools network to download your movies Or just use the school's computer labs to download them.

Zero Strike

[rollinthunda0ne]

Wouldn't this be a "Zero Strike" policy?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Yes, but will you share?

[cdrguru]

The key question is once you have yours are you going to share your gains with the rest of the planet?

No means you are a selfish bastard that somehow thinks they deserve everything and the rest of the planet doesn't.

Yes means you are a criminal infringing copyrights and stealing money from people's pockets.

Tough, huh? Yes, that is where we are today. The problem is right now it is impossible to separate one person's "fair use" in format-shifting their content to another device and another person's sharing the content with the planet, destroying the value of the work and bankrupting the creator.

Personally, I believe we should focus on the bankrupting part. If something is sold that can be represented in digital form it should be copied and distributed in such a widespread manner that it is impossible for the creator to obtain any value from their work. If this is done successfully there will be an answer to the above conundrum. Soon, because right now the economy of the Western world is dependent on value for digital representations. So there will be a solution.

Right now we are at the "kids shoplifting" stage. It is annoying but it isn't (yet) putting content owners completely out of business. We are seeing business models that involve "loss prevention" for music today and some of the techniques are actually innovative. But it is still only annoying rather than threatening. Escalation is needed before real solutions will emerge.

Re:Yes, but will you share?

[headkase]

I'm more of a stone-soup kind of guy. I believe that people shouldn't necessarily expect to get paid for content they create instead I believe in a fundamental viewpoint-shift where people realize that what they get back is worth more than what they are giving away. So basically the destruction of a profit system for content and a shift towards cooperative cottage type content creation with permissive licensing.
So yes, I would share.

Re:THIS POST IS COPYRIGHTED

[RasputinAXP]

What say we use the new RIAA formula? I'll pay you 3 cents.

Warning: Comment by Catholic Saint below.

[CowboyCapo]

"An unjust law is no law at all."

Quote care of St. Augustine.

"An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law."

Quote care of St. Thomas Aquinas.

In short, I would say that KU will find either that this 'law' will be unenforceable, or that their supposed cure will be far worse than the supposed problem, causing the IT department to make the ultimate sanction available to them vis a vis ResNet on everyone who uses the web for anything whatsoever.

It aught to make for interesting watching for anyone that is not a student at KU.

riight...

[dubveezey]

several comments on this issue! obviously, students have no hand in university policy. we abide by it, thats about it. punishing graduates from our school (like not hiring them? what a joke) on these grounds just doesnt make sense. http://resnet.ku.edu/arrive.jsp - this page says the semester rate, which is not $150 and yeah, that intelligent design comment was nice. then lastly, lets see some more discussion on this. go on over the the ResNet forum at http://www.resnet.ku.edu/forum/ anyone can post anonymously post, as ResNet Residential Communications Consultants (RCCs) have access to our own restricted area. go for it!

Interested in constructive suggestions

[vic-traill]

Folks,

The approach taken by the University of Kansas is pretty dough-brained. Ironically, I have little tolerance for zero-tolerance approaches to anything.

I'm located at a post-secondary institution in Canada, and as of this writing the takedown/threatening notices sent by MailSentry et al on behalf of the MPAA, RIAA and misc publishers of electronic texts have no teeth (although this may change if pending legislation is passed).

If we were located south of the 49th parallel, this would be a different story, I suppose. The University has an obligation to manage the risk posed to the institution by such notices. I'm not suggesting that they should stop, drop and roll-over for the industry upon receipt - I believe that the University has an obligation to find the ground which best protects their interests *and* those of its students.

But I'm not the board of the University of Kansas. They may not give a tin shit about the student's interests, or may consider the unauthorised file sharing of copyrighted material as unlawful as the MPAA does (it is illegal under some circumstances, after all, whether you like it or not). And if you leave it to the University's lawyers, they will likely advocate a position much like the University is currently occupying.

So, if I was the IT honcho at the U or K, what's a reasonable position for me, given that as a senior officer of the University I have an obligation to look out for threats to the organisation and manage the associated risk, but also knowing that file sharing is not so clearcut an issue as the industry advocates would have us believe?

Including free software

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that almost all software is copyrighted. For example, the GNU GPL is a specific use of copyright, so any GNU software is copyrighted. And any Mac OS or MS Windows updates you download are almost certainly copyrighted.

So if you've ever run Mac Software Update, Windows Update, or "apt-get upgrade", goodbye.

I wonder if they would try to enforce this. Can anybody make accusations? I'd find somebody running an up-to-date system and try to get them kicked off resnet for having recent software.

Or go the other way: write the the university saying you're the author of free software, and want it to be available to students at UofK, but that their new policy prohibits them from downloading it. Would they be able to provide a way for students to get free software? For example, by calling the helpdesk, having them burn it to a CD, and then delivering it to the dorm by bicycle messenger. (I do not believe that UofK has a policy against receiving copyrighted material via bicycle messenger.)

Too much credit to RMS and not enough to MIT.

[argent]

It's not really different from what happened to RMS at MIT! He too felt so harassed in his freedom to share information that he finally came up with a fantastic alternative. There would be no OSS today, had they been more liberal at MIT AI-lab back then.

Open Source Software owes at least as much to Berkeley's liberal attitude, *and* MIT's liberal attitude, as to RMS. RMS has effectively and unfairly demonized the AI lab, and he's been given too much credit for being one of the more visible rocks in an avalanche of open source software that was already in motion well before he penned the GNU manifesto.

The idea that MIT-AI, MIT-MC, and the rest... running an OS that let any user be "root" and giving accounts to outsiders (including Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle)... were insufficiently "liberal", or that there would be no FOSS without RMS... is distressingly common today, and completely at odds with what the growing open-systems and free-source software community was actually like at the time.

Re:As an alumnus of this very school, let me answe

[swilver]

Ah, I see... so when you have more applicants for your university than you can accept, then you are free to treat them like lesser human beings until the point where demand lowers enough that you can meet it.

It's a public university

[Anonymous Coward]

so fuck the businesses with their complaints. KU doesn't exist for industry's sake (luckily at my university I got a degree not directly applicable to the real world). Any member of KU's board who thinks they answer to business needs to be removed.

I'd transfer to another school.

Re:As an alumnus of this very school, let me answe

[Mycroft_514]

I reported what they are thinking, not what I think is right.

Let me sum it up for you:

1. They can't be sued without their permission.
2. They don't care about person "A" not wanting to get into the dorms next year because they have plenty of people that do.

Arrogance personified.

Lack of Intelligence

[thunderclap]

Personally, I attend college and I can see KU having alot of empty dorms this semester. When administration notices that, the rule will vanish quietly. Them making money will always outweight anything else.

Commitment Towards Higher Education?

[Pfhortytwo]

I'm in my last year of highschool, I live within walking distance of this uni, and haven't even considered the possibility of going here. Whenever I visit the campus, I notice that much it is literally falling apart while they pump money into a few choice buildings that are the most viewed by the public (i.e. student union / basketball stadium). I'd say that it's pretty clear that they are much less interested in serving enrolled students than they are enticing new bank accounts (er, students).

Re:Commitment Towards Higher Education?

[SillySlashdotName]

I drive past this place daily (well, almost daily) and you are correct. However, there is a sound business reason for it.

An investment in repair is an investment in the future, a gesture saying you expect to be around long enough to gain from the repairs.

Investing in new buildings is an investment in your income tax deductions.

Repairs are not tax deductable, improvements and new constructions are - through depreciation, etc.

To understand the reasoning for NOT repairing existing structures, you just have to take the short term view and ignore the long-term. Just what I want from an educational facility. NOT!

Re:Due Process (mod parent up)

[sowth]

You said what I was trying to, but more correctly and ...ummm...better. Thank you.

Re:very often

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean 'sometimes'. Intent (spirit) of the law holds some weight in the UK, but not so much in the US. Even so, there is a big difference between 'very often' and 'always' and this leaves the door open wide to arbitrary enforcement policies.

Even easier

[Anonymous Coward]

Just send an anonymous DMCA letter. Make it look legit, but not traceable. Say IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx was downloading (or sharing) something and you are complaining on behalf of the actual rights holder. Don't give a timestamp or actual file name. Should be impossible for the student to prove themselves innocent if it isn't too detailed. Just has to look good to the beaurocrats and it will fly.

Re:Identification

[Anonymous Coward]

If it follows standard practice for DMCA notices, none. An anonymous email is enough. This is why many bittorrent trackers have notices on their websites that they require ID verification for any DMCA takedown notice. And again, if they follow standard practices, the appeals process is next to impossible to win unless you sue.

"Fun" with zero tolerance

[SnowZero]

Don't like your roommate? Sneak onto his PC and download some movies. Imagine the surprise when he loses his net connection permanently.

OLPC

[Anonymous Coward]

Just restrict ResNet to OLPC laptops. That will prevent them from accessing illegal content.

from what I can see...

[vuffi_raa]

the residential housing in the university of kansas though in the center of the university is close enough on both the north and south sides to have a repeater set up for a wi-fi network- someone should go in and set up a LAN for students to connect to outside of the university network- maybe charge a couple of bucks a month to cover costs

How Would They Know About Downloading?

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

I have not seen a single instance in which the RIAA knew of any downloading.

Re:Yeah, it's titled, Thou Shall Not STEAL !!

[LaughingCoder]

You can't own a song, and it isn't property.

Actually, it isn't the song I am refering to, it is a recording of the artist performing the song. A recording is indeed property.

But it's KU, they don't care anyway....

[Anonymous Coward]

KU is 30 minutes away from a rich county in Kansas City which sends really dumb freshmen who couldn't qualify for a private school to KU every year. So the school is full of freshmen, very few upperclassmen, and some grad students. With all their huge classes, freshmen are cheap. Why would you want students that ever graduate?

Out of 700+ graduating students from the high school that's 1 mile from KU, only ONE was given a scholarship to KU for being the Valedictorian. Out of those 700+ students, a good 400-500 were stuck going to KU because of money or lack of common sense.

KU is easily the worst educational experience you can find in a Div 1 school, so crap like this doesn't surprise me at all. I hope someone sues the crap out of them for this, oh wait, there are a ton of dumb rich kids with lawyer parents at KU, lucky day.

Re:Yeah, it's titled, Thou Shall Not STEAL !!

[StikyPad]

You, sir, need to learn to think like the man. The man believes a transfer of possession is consummated when you receive an item, not when the owner is deprived of it. That's why freezing assets isn't "taking" them, even though the owner is deprived of them. The government does not possess them, therefore they have not been taken. Once you have something in your possession, you have taken it, which is illegal unless you are the government, or a properly registered licensee.

Of course, the man also believes glass is a highly viscous liquid, and anyone who says otherwise is an enemy of the state. New Scientist -- you're on notice!