Having been really bad in a previous life I find myself re-incarnated as Head of Networking at a large English University (I'm also dyslexic and away from a spell check - sorry).
I may (or may not) from time to time get several "Copyright Infringement Notice" emails each week from lawyers making assorted alegations about the activities of our students. Oh, how I love them. These emails fill me with joy.
Now OBVIOUSLY none of our students would ever dream of breaking copyright law, and it would be clearly be stupid of me to suggest otherwise....
But.... most of these students are not CS majors or geeks, and if they were (hypothetically speaking) to engage in a little p2p action "for academic or private research purposes" they may not realise that bts neat way of working inherently telegraphs there activities to the nice lawyers I was talking about earlier.
The result is the equation of joy:-
unrestricted bt + students = letters from lawyers
(and I think I already said how much I like those).
So we as a uni have to put some pretty distastefull (to me) measures in place to try to prevent (the theoretical possibility of) copyright theft (and to protect the dumber users from themselves - but thats a different story).
However, (in my analysis) bt is elegant (in theory if not in actuality yet) and it's use is completely legal (in the UK at least) and has many valid uses. Provided you don't steal anyones copyrighted material - especialy not anyone rich enough to be able to own whole bunch of lawyers, and I recon you should do the following.
1st - chilll for a bit - steaming in all guns blazing won't help at all. Once chilled try to arrange a nice friendly chat - perhaps over a coffee or coke (remeber we do the cafine thing too - I was a young geek once). You need to talk it through with them.
I suspect that mail came from some overworked and/or powecrazed guy (like me, or one of my minions - or maybe even a girl) who has been worn down by the infringement notices, who is losing touch with realiity, maybe they have cracked and are resorting to the same tactics as used by the lawyers - but they have f*cked up - they are wrong bt is leagal - and we cannot allow the lawyers to kill and elegant thing just because they can.
If you're nice and fortune is with you maybe you can restore their faith in humanity, bring them back from the edge and score a victory for reason (or get yourself expelled).
Slashdot Mirror
Nohbdy001 - dude,
:-
Having been really bad in a previous life I find myself re-incarnated as Head of Networking at a large English University (I'm also dyslexic and away from a spell check - sorry).
I may (or may not) from time to time get several "Copyright Infringement Notice" emails each week from lawyers making assorted alegations about the activities of our students.
Oh, how I love them. These emails fill me with joy.
Now OBVIOUSLY none of our students would ever dream of breaking copyright law, and it would be clearly be stupid of me to suggest otherwise....
But.... most of these students are not CS majors or geeks, and if they were (hypothetically speaking) to engage in a little p2p action "for academic or private research purposes" they may not realise that bts neat way of working inherently telegraphs there activities to the nice lawyers I was talking about earlier.
The result is the equation of joy
unrestricted bt + students = letters from lawyers
(and I think I already said how much I like those).
So we as a uni have to put some pretty distastefull (to me) measures in place to try to prevent (the theoretical possibility of) copyright theft (and to protect the dumber users from themselves - but thats a different story).
However, (in my analysis) bt is elegant (in theory if not in actuality yet) and it's use is completely legal (in the UK at least) and has many valid uses. Provided you don't steal anyones copyrighted material - especialy not anyone rich enough to be able to own whole bunch of lawyers, and I recon you should do the following.
1st - chilll for a bit - steaming in all guns blazing won't help at all. Once chilled try to arrange a nice friendly chat - perhaps over a coffee or coke (remeber we do the cafine thing too - I was a young geek once). You need to talk it through with them.
I suspect that mail came from some overworked and/or powecrazed guy (like me, or one of my minions - or maybe even a girl) who has been worn down by the infringement notices, who is losing touch with realiity, maybe they have cracked and are resorting to the same tactics as used by the lawyers - but they have f*cked up - they are wrong bt is leagal - and we cannot allow the lawyers to kill and elegant thing just because they can.
If you're nice and fortune is with you maybe you can restore their faith in humanity, bring them back from the edge and score a victory for reason (or get yourself expelled).
Good luck
Larry