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Georgia College's New Policy — Reporting All P2P Users To the Police
An anonymous reader excerpts from an article at TorrentFreak: "Georgia's Valdosta State University has updated its network with software that can pinpoint students who use P2P software. The university is committed to stop file-sharing on its network even if that results in prison sentences for students. Offenders will be disciplined by the school and then handed over to the police, the university has announced."
School policy is one thing ("don't use file-sharing software on our resource-constrained network, or we may kick you off"), but I suspect the police wouldn't appreciate the task of sorting out legal from illegal use of widespread, essentially neutral software tools.
Update: 11/15 18:27 GMT by T : Reader (and VSU alumnus) Matt Baker contacted the school; he reports that the school's IT director Joe Newton in response flatly denied the claims in the TorrentFreak article, and says the school hasn't installed such P2P tracking software, and doesn't hand students over the police, and says instead "I cannot foresee that we would ever do so." Thanks, Matt.
Is this related to any forms? What about downloading cc music or shows and isos of linux?
Ok, I'm no expert on the US legal situation, but what's to prevent a situation like this from happening:
1) Student installs 100% legal copy of World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2 or any other game which uses a P2P updater system on their PC in their dorm room.
2) Game does its P2P stuff to get its patches.
3) College spots P2P activity and calls police.
4) Police charge college administrators with wasting police time.
5) Student sues college.
Like it or not, P2P isn't just about illegal filesharing. Yes, I'd fully accept that most P2P traffic is illegal, but a blanket policy like this just seems doomed to (probably expensive) failure.
Yes... It uses BitTorrent for updates (yes, you can disable this but most don't). Suddenly people who pay month-to-month to play a game are considered criminals by the school. Um, what?
"You're awefully cute, but unfortunately for you, you're made of meat."
... the first people to be reported will be the lecturers!
Can you point me to the appropriate police department to turn myself in as a possible arsonist?
You're young, living on your own for the first time, and the place that's supposed to be teaching you stuff announces that at the first sign of a misstep they'll "discipline" you and then hand you over to the police for a second helping of same, with a permanent record attached to boot.
What a wonderful way to grow up.
the police have discretions about pursuing perps. if they catch you parking where you shouldn't or smoking a joint or speeding, for example, they can just waive you off if the "crime" isn't that major. so the college wins: no administrative headache, the student wins: the police will mostly ignore the pirating. the only people who lose are the police, who have to look through a bunch of emails and hit "delete", and the RIAA, who will have a hard time justifying onerous financial impositions on what amounts to a crime that, in real life, is no more major than jaywalking
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There are a lot of uses for BitTorrent that have nothing to do with copyright infringement.
Palm trees and 8
Did I miss something? Have the people coding Ares implemented a new protocol, or is this college 5 years behind? Of course, having actually been involved in writing software to track computers on a college campus I am also curious how the college is fingerprinting machines to detect MAC address spoofing, but since this is a press release I wouldn't expect any technically informative information.
"Proximity to wonder has blunted our perception and appreciation of it" --Tim Hartnell in 'Exploring ARTIFICIAL INTELLI
Blizzard (and indeed most MMORPGS these days) uses filesharing to upload patches to their games. So I guess online gaming is not allowed for students there.
No biggie I guess if that's the way they want it. They'd just better make that clear to prospective applicants. "No gamers wanted here."
The RIAA is not only above the law, they are the law /Dredd
They're going to get dozens of reports from the university, they're going to have to sort out the WoW updates from the stuff that was genuinely pirated then they'll have to find the companies involved, contact their legal department and ask if they want to press charges. Why should they go to all that hassle for something that'll have no negative effect on their district and only serve to push up the crime statistics and take officers off the streets?
If the university cared about catching file sharers, they'd report the students activities to the companies whose work is being infringed. Of course they can't be arsed to actually put in the work and not risk their students facing a police interview for something that could be perfectly legal.
Students should just start downloading legal p2p software... at a massive scale.
Make sure that the university and the police department are getting overworked from false claims of illegal downloading.
It's a peaceful, harmless and non-violent way of teaching stupid people that p2p is not always illegal.
So, let's all download FreeBSD (or any of these), I'm sure we'll be doing the authorities a great favor.
Valdosta State was right up there with Harvard and Yale at the top of my applications list but seriously, who would even THINK of going there NOW? ;)
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I thought in the US universities are expensive for-profit ventures. Why would parents pay money to send their kids to a college that will try hard to get them thrown into prison the first chance they get?
...once legal users of filesharers are reported to the police, there is the rather interesting consequences of making a false police report. Then after that will come the private lawsuits. Hence, I suspect this will not be a "problem" for very long...
I found the headline misleading. Georgia College is not doing this. North Georgia College isn't doing this. South Georgia College isn't doing this. East Georgia College isn't doing this. Not even Middle Georgia College is doing this. I'm just saying, if you're going to capitalize Georgia College, make sure that's actually in the name.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Can this institution of higher education see what people are downloading? Looks like a case of someone's guilty of murder because they happen to take advantage of open carry since only someone who owns a gun would freely murder another human being.
Anyway I doubt they'd be able to track this kind of nonsense if the students had a VPN or SSH tunnelled out to a remote computer.
When I was in college one of my classes required that I download, install, and play around with Linux.
At the time, BT didn't exist so the downloads were primarily FTP. But if a professor were to give a similar assignment today I'd guess that just about any distribution you tried to download would want you to use BT.
So, are we going to see students getting disciplined and handed over to the police for doing their homework? Or are the professors going to have to change the assignments to comply with these new rules?
Doesn't seem like a good solution either way...
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Yep. Can see that all the dollars from tuition that haven't gone into their "resource constrained" network have gone into getting quality staff there! They've all had the highest quality lobotomies that money can buy!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Someone should setup their own DTella server. It's some pretty slick software that you can limit to on campus IP addresses.
The downloads there are only for the Purdue Campus, but you can setup your own server. They have some pretty complex IP allow rules. For example you can't use the wireless network between 8 & 5. Nothing off campus. Certain buildings etc. It doesn't count against off campus band width usage. Minimum share requirements, etc.
I've hit 40MB/s from some computer labs (that have GigE) with my laptop. Hands down better than any P2P service out there in terms of speed.
I thought your run-o-the-mill copyright violation was a civil matter. Shouldn't they be reporting the students to the copyright holders?
Maybe I'm old fashioned but couldn't they have just blocked it at the firewall?
Everyone at that university should torrent Natty Narwhal the day it comes out, even if they're a mac or windows user, just to screw with the university.
TFA mentions that this is about the "campus" of a university.
Does that mean the university-owned computers that are meant only for educational purposes? Or does this mean the privately owned computers that students have in their own rooms where they live?
Makes a LOT of difference to me.
If I lived at a campus where the university would rat on me everytime I would download something that may be illegal (but isn't necessarily) - I would be out of there.
That's not a free country anymore... You'd be guilty until proven innocent.
However - if we talk about university owned computers for education - sure... they own it. They can block whatever they want on their own computers in their own buildings on their own networks... although I think it's childish.
I suspect the police wouldn't appreciate the task of sorting out legal from illegal use of widespread, essentially neutral software tools
Once the school reports someone, they're implicitly making an accusation that illegal activity has already occurred. I don't think it is up to the police to decide at that point; it is a matter for the courts.
Will this school ban Linux because... well... hackers sometimes use it! To do illegal stuff!!!!
Anyone that's gone to college knows that the university does it's very best to suspend every constitutional right they can while you're there. I've been to court over legal issues twice in my life and both times they were within a year of each other and while I was in college. In both cases I represented myself, challenged the counties evidence on constitutional grounds and won. Those weren't my only run-ins with the police either, just the ones that went to court. In one instance they searched my room while I was on Christmas break and charged me for having an empty wine bottle in my room. Unfortunately for them I was 23 at the time. In another instance a police officer asked if she could come into my dorm room. I refused, at which point she said if I didn't have anything to hide I'd let her in. I explained that rights were like muscles, they get weak if you don't use them. She came in anyway and despite a thorough sacking of my room found nothing.
The universities play these games because the students let them. I eventually just moved off campus. My rent was 1/3rd what the dorms were and I didn't have any more trouble with the university police. I recomend the same for everyone living on campus at this university as well.
...but as others have already stated, P2P is *not*
As: owning and using a gutting knife isn't a criminal offence, while killing my wife with one most definitely is.
Now for the quiz question: what would the police say if I reported every case of gutting knife posession/usage in my neighbourhood?
Oh, well. Let's be careful. Maybe some would even like that idea.
I knew plenty of people who shared files on the campus network just by sharing their directories (read-only, no password) with everyone. Would that be banned under this action? What if they are sharing a directory of freeware or open source material?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I am not a lawyer, much less an American one, but since when did casual copyright infringement via P2P become a criminal matter rather than a civil one? And if this is the case, why do the RIAA waste their own money suing file sharers when they could simply call the police and have the matter dealt with by the state?
Either there has been some legal development of which I am unaware, or this university is going to look rather foolish when they start trying to report the first batch of "offenders".
I used to work for a university's network dept. at a fairly high level and it fell on my shoulders to handle the RIAA complaints, I pretty much refused because it was ridiculous. When I would be forced to turn info over, I would just give them IP's which were basically useless but they would never get back to me for more info. When the pressure really got strong, I decided the only way I would comply would be to install a device that did actual audio fingerprinting. This way it wasn't just a witch hunt or false positives based on someone simply using P2P or a filename but verified inspection and reporting. Even then, it had it's own way of handling it internally, after each offense it encountered it would email the user with the info and a warning, after 3 infractions it basically cut the port speed to 56k for that user so they could still do school work but little else, any additional infractions resulted in reporting.
It put the onus on the student and was as reasonable as could be for the screwed up system in place. In the end the RIAA should never have as much power as it does and the fines should be at most $5-20 per song which is between a 500% and 2000% penalty which is quite enough without being so insane as the current system is. No matter how you slice it, it is B.S.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
I see a lot of replies about legal torrents, false accusations, etc. These kind of news items tend to be purposely sensational and leave out the practical stuff. I'm pretty sure that in reality their P2P filter will check which torrent tracker is used before determining whether something should be forwarded to the police or not. Sure it's possible that "illegal" trackers host something legal, but I bet it will get them a 99% accuracy or better.
That said, a school should simply block all torrent use and leave it at that. While there are legal *uses* for torrents in a school, I don't see a *need* for them. Most things are available by "regular" download as well and, if not, the school can provide it themselves. No need to make things complicated or ugly.
Everyone download the latest Fedora.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
What is the point of "calling the police" over a civil issue?
Should the IP owners be calling their lawyers instead?
And HTTP a file-sharing protocol? Next week Georgia College reports every person on their network to the police.
Harvard and Yale are private. Most schools without "State" or the name of a state (Virginia, Texas, California, ....) are public institutions and highly subsidized by taxes. There are exceptions, but the rule is 99% correct.
A few state funded schools:
University of {location}
University of Virginia
University of Nebraska
University of Iowa
University of Florida
University of Georgia
University of Texas
University of New Mexico
The only school that is private that follows this rule that I'm aware is University of Pennsylvania.
Some other state schools:
{location} State University/College
Texas State University
Iowa State University
Georgia State University
Valdosta State University
Arizona State University
Private colleges/universities usually have someone's name and those are highly expensive when compared to state funded institutions. About 10-20x more expensive.
Yale, Harvard, Rice, George Washington, Brown, Radford, Carnegie Mellon, etc....
Faith-based schools are all private - TCU - Texas Christian University, Baylor for example.
20 yrs ago when I was at university, tuition at private schools was $14K-$30K per year. I paid $1000/yr. That did not include living expenses. These days, the public institutions are about $6K/yr.
I live in Georgia. Valdosta State ... is not considered much of a university. That college is a place where kids go to avoid "the real world." There are some brilliant teachers AND students there, but the average student is nothing like UGA or Ga-Tech. Georgia Tech is a world class institution with the top 1% of high school students attending. UGA is the top 25% of high school students. All three schools are state funded. I believe they charge the identical amount for tuition.
In Texas, there are 3 levels of state institutions targeted at different students. Tuition is identical at each of them, but the entrance requirements are harder and fees are different. UT and Tx A&M are the top tier schools. Tx Tech and Tx State U are middle tier schools, then the rest are "local institutions" - a nice way to put it. I may have missed a few middle tier schools.
I've worked with some absolutely brilliant people who attended "local institutions." Sometimes life gets in the way or she/he simply didn't want to leave home or couldn't find a way to afford the costs of living away from home.
I'm not very worried about this policy at VSU. I am worried that it is being reviewed at UGA and Ga-Tech where my kids will probably attend. I used P2P a few days ago to get a copy of CentOS 5.5 DVD and left it seeding for a few days. Generally, I don't use P2P.
...it's a scare tactic with no bite, to make students use less bandwidth to save the college money. The police won't care about copyright infringement unless the copyright holders themselves complain. An interesting theory.
Oh goodie so now I can pay $15-40k a year for universities to investigate me for file sharing on their network. And here I thought it would go towards hiring better professors...oh well I guess they'll just fire all the Philosophy professors instead. Kidding they'll just raise tuition to compensate for the snooping costs.
blanket policies using draconian solutions against the the unwashed masses is the only thing bureaucracies are able to do reliably.
It may also fall under laws / protection for ISP's as well.
Yes the dorm internet is a like a ISP and it's not free the cost is build into a tech fee and or room and board costs.
Once the school reports someone, they're implicitly making an accusation that illegal activity has already occurred. I don't think it is up to the police to decide at that point; it is a matter for the courts.
So if I go to the police and accuse my neighbour of (say) being a terrorist (I saw him with a thing that looked like a bomb!), then the police will *automatically arrest and charge him*, regardless as to any other evidence, since "it's for the courts to decide"?
You seem to have missed the step where the police *investigate* and do things like question witnesses, and only proceed if there appears to be some sort of case to answer. If the student was accused of illegally donwloading 'linux-whatever.iso' and can show pretty clear evidence of permission for anyone to download it, the college would have nothing to counter with and their case evaporates. The college would also need to show something relating to why this was a criminal and not civil copyright matter, given that the police have no interest in civil copyright enforcement.
Alright, some particularly stupid police officer who (say) didn't like students, might ignore all this *once* but it would soon turn into a media story + malicious prosecution suits + police wasting time etc., the EFF would probably get involved (with money etc.) and the college policy (the automatic report to police bit anyhow) would stop right there.
I just sent this to a freeculture.org mailing list -- thought I'd spread the
idea here too (not having time at the moment to implement it):
---
A good protest method, if anyone has time & a means to contact some
students there:
Students there start deliberately using the software to share completely
legal things (e.g., freely licensed and public domain music and books),
and then when the police come knocking, explain to the police that
sharing culture and information is not inherently illegal. Force the
administration and the police to start making distinctions, instead of
always assuming that something is prohibited until proven permitted.
QuestionCopyright.org might try to organize something like that, if we :-)
can find some spare cycles, but... it would be a *perfect* kind of
action for Free Culture / SFC! Please, please beat us to it!
-Karl
http://www.red-bean.com/kfogel
Sooner or later a school will try this and see a student protest in the form of peer-to-peer sharing of content legitimately related to their studies: Film majors will torrent public domain films, science and engineering students will torrent large public domain datasets, business students will torrent high-res full-color scanned-in copies of their own presentations, and the like.
When the police discover what is going on they won't be pleased that the university is wasting their time.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Here at Washington State University, the download of any file ending in ".torrenet" over http/ftp is blocked. Furthermore, attempting to use bittorrenet anyways simply doesn't work, you get no connections. Updating World of Warcraft simply causes it to default to the HTTP download instead of P2P. Their stance on the issue, is that there are non-P2P ways to get pretty much any piece of legal software, use those instead.
Just being the devil's advocate here (in a limited way)...
It's their network, and if their terms and conditions say "no P2P", then they are entitled to enforce that policy. It does not matter whether or not it's a fair decision, or an intelligent one, or a well-informed one. It's none of those, obviously, but if they say you're not allowed to use P2P, that's their call. If you violate that policy, you ARE doing something "wrong". Just like if they would say you're not allowed to wear a hat on the grounds.
However, calling the cops on them... I'm not sure if violating TOS is illegal in any way. Maybe a breach of contract, but that's it. I don't know what kind of sanctions their TOS include, but terminating access would seem to be the worst they can do. In fact, even if actual copyright violations took place, it's probably still not something you can call the police for. But IANAL
Gonna make handing in your report hard. After all, they're trying to stamp out file sharing. When your professor asks for your work, tell them you can't because that would be file sharing.
I hope all the students make sure their pcs are clean then repeatedly download all the legal torrents they can find available as many times as they can. I'm thinking they could do 'research' into linux distros.
The police will soon tell the university to shove their stupid rule.
The school where I work has a layer 7 firewall implemented that just blocks all P2P traffic (BT, Kazaa, etc.). If a teacher has a legit/teaching use for it we can unblock it for their IP/computer lab. Yeah, it's annoying since I can't update WoW from work anymore, but it's mostly been a "set it and forget it" solution for us.
This space for rent...
Banning technology or tools is what governments, organizations, etc do when they can't fix behavior.
It's that problem of controlling people, which tends to be difficult.
The BEST you can do is try to design your network so that all access requires that you can identify who the user is even if you can't identify the data (cause it's encrypted).
When the college gets called with a lawsuit because somebody violated the rules of behavior, you execute the consequences that the person agreed to when you gave them access to the network.
What about downloading cc music or shows
As for Creative Commons licensed music, one of the major music publishers can probably dig up some similar song from a decade ago to prove that the music was copied as opposed to original. This would mean that the composer of the CC music did not have the right to put it under a CC license. And besides, I don't think that's what most people are downloading because the non-free music industry controls traditional promotion venues, such as radio, TV, and in-store background music.
As for Creative Commons licensed shows, that's not what people are downloading for this reason: Since when are there such shows with production values comparable to even non-free network TV, let alone non-free feature films?
I mean, if you're going to be irrational about "file sharing", you may as well be completely irrational.
It also seems to me that a properly implemented P2P protocol that favours near peers would be beneficial. Rather than having a few hundred or thousand students connecting to an update site and tying up the internet connection, a few of them can grab the update and then can will be distributed with the internal network with nearby peers. End result is that the students get the updates faster, and less actual internet bandwidth is used.
Check them out on thefire.org and see just how fascist Valdosta state is: http://www.thefire.org/case/751.html
I really wonder: how does this college think it's improving the learning environment for its students? How do they think this will affect the recruitment of talented students who could study elsewhere? Maybe they think their network is clogged and they're too poor to buy extra bandwidth, so they're trying to scare students by this presumption of guilt. That would raise a serious red flag with me if I were applying for college - the fact that the college administration finds this kind of move wise, or even thinkable. Sorry, there are less sketchy colleges in this country, probably even in Georgia.
What's more, it won't reduce in any appreciable way the downloading of illegal music, movies, etc. because nobody needs to use P2P for that purpose in an age of Rapidshare, Mediafire, Megaupload, etc., etc..
It's Georgia right? They'll probably hand you over to police if you have teeth.
FLR
OT but amusing:
When I was stationed at Moody AFB in Valdosta back in 1982, we were warned that Lowndes County had the highest VD rate in Georgia.
When I returned for some training in 1995, the warning was repeated.
Glad to see County resources being diverted to prosecute P2P users by their enlightened institution of higher learning. :P
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Let me tell you about the p2p policy at my school, Indiana University. They officially forbid sharing of copyrighted materials, but do not enforce the policy themselves. Bittorrent, ftp, emule, limewire, etc all work with default settings, and as far as I can tell they are not throttled. It is not uncommon for me to get 2Mbit/s total bandwidth over wireless. They also don't seem to care how much bandwidth you use. Between the four people in my dorm room, I would estimate there have been hundreds of gigabytes downloaded this fall (not exaggerating) without so much as an email. If a media company complains to the University, they well simply forward you the letter and charge you a $50 fine, but ONLY if they receive a letter themselves. This seems acceptable, because they are protecting themselves without acting as police. It seems to me that the only reason a university would take Valdosta's approach is because they are too cheap to beef up the campus infrastructure, which is a sad and disgraceful excuse for turning 19yo kids over to the police.
Sharing files and sharing copyrighted files are being smudged in this article. I don't think it's illegal to share files, it is only illegal to share copyrighted files.
but I suspect the police wouldn't appreciate the task of sorting out legal from illegal use of widespread, essentially neutral software tools.
From the Georgia statutes:
16-9-93. Computer crimes defined; exclusivity of article; civil remedies; criminal penalties (a) Computer theft. Any person who uses a computer or computer network with knowledge that such use is without authority and with the intention of: (1) Taking or appropriating any property of another, whether or not with the intention of depriving the owner of possession; (2) Obtaining property by any deceitful means or artful practice; or (3) Converting property to such person's use in violation of an agreement or other known legal obligation to make a specified application or disposition of such property shall be guilty of the crime of computer theft.
If the university says straight out you don't have the authority to use filesharing, you've already met one element of this crime. Is it really unreasonable to provide the police with that information so they can investigate and see if you committed the other element? Crimes are meant to be investigated by law enforcement, not civilians.
So, as an embarrassed alumnus of Valdosta State University, I emailed them with my concern. They immediately responded that the student paper had misquoted them, and they have no intention of turning information over to police and have not even settled on a P2P policy.
Here is the quote from the reply:
"The Spectator article was, unfortunately, factually in error. While our process is not yet defined, we currently do not hand over students to the Police nor have we purchased software to hunt them down and I cannot foresee that we would ever do so. I hope to have a correction made as soon as possible."
Valdosta State did have some serious boneheads in the IT Dept. I had several friends that held student positions in the department and they complained alot about the management. That being said, for a AA sized ( and growing ) Statue University it is a great school. They have an excellent business and education department. The Math/CS department is good for a small school to. We had some excellent professors when I was there. I enjoyed my time at VSU and I wouldn't judge the college based on this stupid idea. The campus has a lot of good Professors and is a nice place to go to school...just the administrative side of the campus is a little crazy ( well alot ). You also have to remember...this is in South Georgia...it is almost like stepping back in time when it comes to politics and law enforcement on the local level.
Alright, some particularly stupid police officer who (say) didn't like students, might ignore all this *once* but it would soon turn into a media story + malicious prosecution suits + police wasting time etc., the EFF would probably get involved (with money etc.) and the college policy (the automatic report to police bit anyhow) would stop right there.
No, the police can't 'charge' people with crimes. They can arrest people on suspicion on crimes for up to 48 hours, (or, hell, arrest them without any stated reason.) but actually charging them is the job of the district attorney, who has to look at the evidence and sign off on an arrest warrant.
And DAs don't do stupid shit like that, because they are, tada, elected, and care about their win/loss ratio, and especially don't want exceptionally stupid cases filed that will make them look stupid at the next election.
And felonies, which I'm not sure this is, require more than that, the DA can't even go directly to trial, first he has to go to a grand jury and get them to agree that the case has enough evidence to have a trial.
Strictly speaking, anyone can go the grand jury and give them evidence and they can write an arrest warrant, for any crime, even misdemeanors. It is entirely possible to have someone convicted of a crime without the DA or police being involved at all, although it gets tricky trying to arrest them. And this has actually happened, google 'runaway grand juries', including a instance or two where the grand jury decided that the DA was in on it and charged them also. (That must be awkward for the police: 'Hey, here's that evidence in the Franklin case, I think we have enough to charge him. Can you sign off on it and we'll get it to the grand jury? Oh, and speaking of the grand jury...here's an arrest warrant from them, and, long story short, you're under arrest.')
Not that any of this is relevant, as copyright violation isn't illegal under Georgia law, and hence the Georgia police, either local or state, the DA, and/or the grand jury, would do fuck-all about reports someone was committing it, and if you kept wasting their time with those reports after being told it wasn't a state issue, you'd be charged with deliberately wasting the police or the court's time.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Somebody should set up a tracker just for legal p2p streams just for baiting^W edumacating idiots like this. It could probably be a self-funding foundation with all the counter-suits.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
For those wondering what the bill actually says - may I direct your attention to the following:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_bills&docid=f:h4137enr.txt.pdf
Sec 488.P, 493.29.A|B
Valdosta (DRAFT!!) AUP
http://www.valdosta.edu/it/policies/documents/Acceptable-Use-Policy-2010-07-01-P2P-PCI-PII-DRAFT.pdf
It is quite sad universities feel it is acceptable to treat their own students with such rank disrepect.
Not to mention threatening you with the idea that it's a cold world and if you don't excel you'll be stuck pumping gas. No pressure or anything.
I would set up 200 P2P accounts and transfer photos of my cock titled "Fuck the Police" or "Underage Teen Porn", and send it back and forth to my accounts just to give them something to do.
Did the students agree to this kind of action when they signed all the paperwork for school?
I see you haven't heard of ACTA yet.
Mod up.
Also. . ,
This kind of pressure, even falsely leveled, isn't necessarily a bad thing as it keeps the decision makers aware that they are being watched with narrowed eyes. Encourages them to not give life to the stupid ideas wandering around inside their skulls. Because once those stupid ideas find a voice, their egos will not allow them to recant. Once said, all stupid ideas must be defended; it is the retard way!
So while it may not be the best kind of journalism, it did do it's job. Kudos! This is why the young and brash often end up being the gate-keepers of sanity. Read up on how the next generation of youth, (those who came along after the Hitler Youth), in WWII Germany did a great deal to undermine the Nazis and lead Germany out of the darkness.
It's also one of the reasons I think our own youth are being drugged both via food and anti-depressants, dumbed down with iTech, video games and TV. The PTB know that the young souls are the ones with the power and grist to upset their evil schemes, so they attacked full-on leaving our kids so dazed and vacant. Hopefully a few of the brighter ones will click-to and step out of the drug daze to save our sorry asses!
-FL
Most of these Universities are using Linux. The Linux license needs to be moved away from GPL to a license that prohibits distribution over any channel other than P2P. If the Universities can no longer get Linux on CDROM, DVD, or by downloading from a web site, but MUST use P2P, they'll have a hard time taking the stance that no P2P is allowed on their networks.
They seem to have a particular issue over the use of the P2P client, Ares. Why is that? From looking at the web site (I had never heard of it before) it looks like they just married the standard Bittorent client with a CD burner so there's nothing special about this P2P client. Did it deserve special mention just because it's the latest buzz word the school officials heard about or is there something special about it?
I'd just like to mention that the only tracking that can be done, and the software mentioned most likely is from the conversion to Active Directory, the change of which had nothing to do with tracking P2P (it was a budget change that saved the school money). Tracking is currently done by the security department due to the very obvious signature that a p2p system makes. Usually they either drop the connection from the machine or have someone talk to the offender and see what was going on. Seems archaic, but it works well to prevent someone doing something legitimate, such as torrenting a linux iso or a patch for a game.
This does sound like a scam (at the expense of some journalists). Such a system isn't practical. Although some protocols are predominantly used for distributing controlled data streams, you still need a deep level of inspection to confirm in any case that such use is occurring. Such inspection if done with no restriction could lead to an invasion of privacy that would result in violent student rioting. On a campus network, anyone you piss off need only take a 5 minute march to reach you. Either way the net result would be some possibly large number of users migrating to alternate broadband services. The university network wouldn't be very popular. In general I recommend avoiding networks provided by a university. Often, someone on some University staff will have an attitude akin to a religious dictator. An attitude that anything other than learning is a distraction from it. This attitude leads to a Taliban like regime or influence guarding network resources. No entertainment, no pleasure, nothing other than the task at hand. Indeed, these nazis believe that those undertaking an academic course must shun all temptation and devote every waking millisecond to their academic pursuits. It doesn't matter that you pay your student fees, rent and accommodation, they own you, you're born with the original sin of being uneducated and must be punished by being committed to a forced regimen of ceaseless study. As far as such people are concerned, you should not be permitted to drink, play games, listen to music, watch tv or engage in any such leisurely activities until you have succeeded in your higher education course. They are few, but that's all you need to ruin your day.
Just because the free has lower production values does not mean people don't want.
Then let's use measures of what people want. Name three works distributed under a license for free cultural works that has won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, or other such well-known awards. Name one song distributed under a license for free cultural works that has spent two weeks on a major developed country's music charts.
I hope your post was just ineffective sarcasm, but I suspect it is just deranged.
I'd love to be proven wrong.
Any bets as to how long it takes before the police tell the college, "Please stop doing this"?
I'm guessing somewhere after the first 100 and before the 500 mark. Then, after the first 1,000 the police start DDOSing the system that's sending them all the reports.
If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough.
So did a public performance of said private viewing reach ears of RIAA agents to induce and inquisition to determine the Right to said Property or are these blanket contra'jurisdictional challenges to Proof of Claim by Owner rather than Proof of Claim by Claimant?
It's not adding up, that's not how Proof of Claim works in the courts: prove you've been deprived of money, injurred in such a way. Someone sold me a car and I reverberate the engine as I drive down the road: am I sued for sounding like I have 2 engines in my car running while I only bought 1 just because I was inspired by Police Academy the Movie to make engine noises with my lips? What about Sing-Along-Songs, or *Gasp* KID BOP MUSIC of children singing RIAA's NIRVANA title In Bloom "Sell the Kids for Food" song? Maybe RIAA should make consumables like FOOD rather than music that can echo off copyright-violating Drywall. Maybe RIAA can sell Ceiling Accoustic too, or maybe CDROM's that break after 1 Session, or maybe they can sue the needle in my Turntable, or the Heads in my Casette deck and Tape reader, or maybe... ...maybe when responding to a survey of complains, you discern who the complainant truly is and if they are anonymous then there is no complaint but a dellusion that you or RIAA registered from a non-interested party. Something is going to give here, Americans, and it's not going to be the hymen of a young student's bank account because music has resale value that is reserved to the owner and there is now Maintenance or Administrative grant conferred or resolved to RIAA but an frivolous suggestion that is ployed past the clerk for a court that has no jurisidiction but administrative assent to spurious double-construction in regulations.
i was thinking the same thing. "ddos"-like attack could very easily be set up by just one student
warning pointless sig
This story originated last week in the Valdosta State University student newspaper in an article titled “New Software traces illegal downloads on campus”. There are several false statements by the reporter and today the Editor-in-Chief stated that a correction will be issued by the newspaper.
Unauthorized use of P2P software is a violation of a Valdosta State University policy which is intended to keep nonacademic uses from overwhelming institutional bandwidth. Appropriate uses of P2P software can though be approved and are not a violation of institutional policy.
The university does not refer student violations to the police or the courts. Student policy violations including those involving P2P software are addressed solely by Student Code of Conduct. The student judicial process is progressive and almost always begins with a warning for a first offense. Only after multiple offenses is suspension of network privileges considered.
Didn't mininova (after some legal "presure") go legit recently?
one of the major music publishers can probably dig up some similar song from a decade ago to prove that the music was copied as opposed to original
This isn't that likely. Proving this would be very difficult and expose the publisher to a similar lawsuit if it turns out there's someything even older.
After the Beatles broke up, George Harrison wrote and recorded "My Sweet Lord". Then Bright Tunes Music successfully sued Harrison's publishing company about "My Sweet Lord" being too close to Ronald Mack's "He's So Fine" (recorded by the Chiffons). Nobody came out and sued Bright Tunes (or ABKCO, which subsequently bought Bright Tunes) about "He's So Fine".
Have you seen some of the Star Trek fan productions? It's incredible what you can do with consumer equipment these days.
Yeah, like infringe Paramount's copyrights.
but since Harrison did pretty much plagarise substantial chinks of the other song, it's no surprise he lost.
So how can I tell whether or not I'm accidentally plagiarizing something before I release my own work? Is there a set of best practices to avoid musical plagiarism?
Paramount permits this.
In which document does Paramount express permission for Trek fan productions? I've seen MTV Networks, which shares a corporate parent with Paramount, send a bunch of takedown notices to YouTube about fan parodies of animated series shown on Nickelodeon and Comedy Central.
It just seems unlikely that you'll be unlucky enough.
If I, say, compose music for a video game, "unlucky" is not a word that the video game's publisher wants to hear. They want sure things, indemnities, and the like, and they want enough due diligence to qualify for an E&O policy when a sure thing isn't achievable. I just wanted to know if there were some sort of spot-checking process I could run as due diligence to see if I screwed up.
Of course, you could just adapt from esxisting free works and evolve from there.
In other words: "The only safe songs to perform are those written and published before 1923." To me, this looks like an utter failure of copyright "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", as my country's constitution puts it.
If it was as easy as you suggest when you said "music publishers can probably dig up some similar song from a decade ago to prove that the music was copied as opposed to original", then George Harrison could have found a song "She's so Fine" was similar to, bought the rights and then claimed his rights were violated.
In fact, Harrison tried to get his manager to buy Bright Tunes to end this dispute, but according to this page, his manager had a conflict of interest and bought Bright Tunes not on Harrison's but on ABKCO's behalf.
[If you want to make a fan work and none of the copyright owners of works that actually have enough of an audience to make a fandom will go along with it,] Find something in the creative commons. This is something that needs to be bootstrapped certainly but we could produce a rich world that encourages derivitive works.
I want to join a project dedicated to bootstrapping such freely licensed settings. Does this exist, or must I start my own?