What I do not understand about settlement offers, being accused and prosecuted for illegally acquiring copyright protected content online is that it would seem that you would actually have to have gotten the content. It seems that many people are being prosecuted as if they actually did get the content. Just because your IP address shows on a log kept by an ISP as connecting to P2P networks for particular files does not mean you actually ever got the content even if you admitted that it was you trying. Seems like there should be a difference, just like there is a difference between "attempted murder" and "murder", "attempted robbery" and actual "robbery", etc. With all of the corrupted files, downloads that were never complete for whatever reason, etc. It seems like they would have to prove that you actually obtained usable content illegally to be prosecuted for stealing songs, movies, etc. Otherwise you are just getting in trouble for downloading chunks of unusable data. Or am I mistaken, and all of these fines and court cases are about just "attempting" to get the content and not actually getting it? Is that why I don't ever really see this issue being brought up?
In many cases they do have this power. I am the IT admin for a high school. I work directly for the Principal/Assistant Principal. I do whatever they ask, and spend time on what they want me to. There are many times when the things they ask me to work on are not nearly as important as the items already on my plate, from an IT standpoint, but they are the boss, and if you like your job, you usually do what you can to make the boss happy (in any job.)
On the other hand, it doesn't sound like the principal and IT staff have their shit together. myspace is a serious issue in schools. but between decent filter/logging software, group policy, and maybe a packet monitor (they should already have been using all of these tools long before this incident, they are necessary in a school environment.) they should not have all of these problems, and it sounds like they wasted an excessive amount of time. I filter the crap out of myspace, proxies, im applications, etc. The average "myspace kid" is not going to find "firewall backdoors" to myspace. And if they do find workarounds to security measures, everything is logged, so you simply identify and plug the hole. I do this constantly (for staff and students) and it does not eat up excessive amounts of my time. (and it is kind of fun)
There should be none of this "wife calls from home with update on who leaves comments, students are confronted and accused of logging on at school" nonsense. If there IT staff was worth a crap, they would be able to tell you what student accessed what site when from any computer on campus. That is what I do, and then they are screwed no matter what, even if they say it is not them, (usually I will set them up and catch them physically as well when possible.) because I can definitely say and show documentation that their user account was used to access lets say, myspace. The student and their parents sign an AUP before they use any school computer that says very specifically that they need to protect their user account because all activity on it will be "theirs" even if it was someone else because they gave out their account info.
no, public resources should not be used in this way, there is no excuse or reason for shutting down classes and spending unnecessary and excesive amounts of time on this type of thing. It sounds like these guys are suffering from a not too bright administrator and a not too bright IT department.
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What I do not understand about settlement offers, being accused and prosecuted for illegally acquiring copyright protected content online is that it would seem that you would actually have to have gotten the content. It seems that many people are being prosecuted as if they actually did get the content. Just because your IP address shows on a log kept by an ISP as connecting to P2P networks for particular files does not mean you actually ever got the content even if you admitted that it was you trying. Seems like there should be a difference, just like there is a difference between "attempted murder" and "murder", "attempted robbery" and actual "robbery", etc. With all of the corrupted files, downloads that were never complete for whatever reason, etc. It seems like they would have to prove that you actually obtained usable content illegally to be prosecuted for stealing songs, movies, etc. Otherwise you are just getting in trouble for downloading chunks of unusable data. Or am I mistaken, and all of these fines and court cases are about just "attempting" to get the content and not actually getting it? Is that why I don't ever really see this issue being brought up?
In many cases they do have this power. I am the IT admin for a high school. I work directly for the Principal/Assistant Principal. I do whatever they ask, and spend time on what they want me to. There are many times when the things they ask me to work on are not nearly as important as the items already on my plate, from an IT standpoint, but they are the boss, and if you like your job, you usually do what you can to make the boss happy (in any job.)
On the other hand, it doesn't sound like the principal and IT staff have their shit together. myspace is a serious issue in schools. but between decent filter/logging software, group policy, and maybe a packet monitor (they should already have been using all of these tools long before this incident, they are necessary in a school environment.) they should not have all of these problems, and it sounds like they wasted an excessive amount of time. I filter the crap out of myspace, proxies, im applications, etc. The average "myspace kid" is not going to find "firewall backdoors" to myspace. And if they do find workarounds to security measures, everything is logged, so you simply identify and plug the hole. I do this constantly (for staff and students) and it does not eat up excessive amounts of my time. (and it is kind of fun)
There should be none of this "wife calls from home with update on who leaves comments, students are confronted and accused of logging on at school" nonsense. If there IT staff was worth a crap, they would be able to tell you what student accessed what site when from any computer on campus. That is what I do, and then they are screwed no matter what, even if they say it is not them, (usually I will set them up and catch them physically as well when possible.) because I can definitely say and show documentation that their user account was used to access lets say, myspace. The student and their parents sign an AUP before they use any school computer that says very specifically that they need to protect their user account because all activity on it will be "theirs" even if it was someone else because they gave out their account info.
no, public resources should not be used in this way, there is no excuse or reason for shutting down classes and spending unnecessary and excesive amounts of time on this type of thing. It sounds like these guys are suffering from a not too bright administrator and a not too bright IT department.