USC To Students: No Sharing Files

jukal writes: "copy-paste from a Wired article: 'Students at the University of Southern California could face a school year without computer access if they are busted swapping movies and music online. In an e-mail message to all students, school officials warned that using peer-to-peer file-trading services could force the university to kick students off the network. '"

Re:Even if it's MY Music?

[jareds]

What if it's MY music? I cannot share it?

That's not a justifiable thing to assume. According to the article, "the e-mail outlines the definition of copyright violations," which strongly implies that they are only concerned with copyright violations, and distributing your own music is not a copyright violation.

Re:Even SMB filesharing?

[Spy Hunter]

Yeah. If you have sharescan [sharescan.net] and a college network, who needs Napster/Gnutella/WinMX/Kazaa?

UCF does the same thing

[dotgod]

At the University of Central Florida, they have a no p2p policy also. I got caught last year and had to pay (about) $30 to go to a "computer usage" workshop for an hour. 20 minutes of the hour were spent watching an episode of Futorama. Students who got caught twice had their network access permanently revoked. The letter that I recieved gave me a URL that contained the "evidence" (in the form of a SniffIt screenshot) that I was using a p2p network.

I attend USC

[zurmikopa]

They were one of the universities to block napster when it started becoming a problem, but they later reversed that. I'm no longer on the campus network having moved to my own appartment but when I was on the network, even when there was massive amounts of file sharing it was still considerably faster than my 1.5/768 dsl is now, so I don't think bandwidth is the real issue as some have suggested. They flag down those that consume a lot of bandwidth and send them warnings, and sometimes suspensions. (I have a friend that shared files over irc and got a nasty letter about using too much bandwidth)

My freshman year (a while ago) the "my network neighborhood" feature of windows worked and many shared files that way. That went away the following year much to the annoyance of many students.

This e-mail isn't really news, it's more of a reminder of a policy that was already in place.

On an only slightly related note. The campus network is handled by ISD (Internet Services Division) which has nothing to do with the CS department. The CS department has an eternal grudge with ISD. (As do a good number of CS students)

USC also seems to take complaints about the students overly seriously. My friend got spam sent to him to which he replied "Fuck you" along with some other unpleasentness. The spammer complained to USC who sent my friend a warning about proper conduct.

Re:Even if it's MY Music?

[parliboy]

I did. They ramp that down, too.

Re:Even SMB filesharing?

[grazzy]

if everyone on the network used a program like that the net would be swamped. netbios isnt exactly the most pretty protocol, use a centralized server like waesch ( http://waesch.mircosoft.nu ) or untzuntzlan ( http://untzuntzlan.scourgeforge.net ) instead.

The actual email

[MalleusEBHC]

Here is the whole copy of what was sent to all students here:
Dear Student:
This email is being sent to all students at USC to make sure they have the same information about copyright compliance.
Introduction
The University of Southern California is committed to the education of its students. Part of the educational process includes the provision of internet connections for students in classrooms, residences, libraries, eating establishments, and other places on campus. Students who live off campus may also access the internet through USC's computers via modems. Over the past two years the university has made efforts to make students aware of policies governing the use of its computing facilities and systems to enhance their educational experience and keep them from violating university, state, federal polices and laws that would negatively impact their student status.
As a part of this ongoing effort we want to alert you to the fact that many of you are risking complete loss of access to the USC computer system and both disciplinary and legal sanctions. Below is an overview of how students are placing themselves in jeopardy by inappropriately using USC's internet connections.
Is File Sharing Worth Losing Student Privileges at USC?
You are undoubtedly aware of the development of file-sharing software such as Napster, Gnutella, and Hotline, also known as peer-to-peer networks ("P2P networks"), and the fact that the use of P2P networks to share copyrighted material, such as movies, music and software, can violate the rights of copyright owners. As you probably know, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that the majority of Napster users are directly infringing federal copyright law by sharing music files without the permission of musical artists and recording companies who own these materials.
Copyright infringement occurs whenever you make a copy of any copyrighted work - songs, videos, software, cartoons, photographs, stories, novels - without purchasing that copy from the copyright owner, or obtaining permission some other way. Infringement also occurs when one person purchases an authorized copy, but allows others to reproduce further "pirated" copies. For example, if a student purchases a CD and creates an MP3 copy on his or her hard drive, and then uses a P2P network to share that MP3 copy with others, both the student and those making copies are infringing the owners' copyright rights and violating federal copyright law.
USC prohibits any infringement of intellectual property rights by any member of the USC community. As an academic institution, USC's purpose is to promote and foster the creation of intellectual property. It is antithetical to this purpose for USC to play any part, even inadvertently, in the violation of the intellectual property rights of others. The USC policy regarding student use of USC computing resources clearly states that a student who reproduces or distributes copyrighted materials in electronic form without permission from the material's owner may be removed from the USC computer system and face further disciplinary action.
Further, infringing conduct exposes the infringer to serious legal penalties. In response to the growth of infringement through P2P networks, the recording and motion picture industries have increased their efforts to identify and stop those who download unauthorized music and video files. Organizations such as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) can and do monitor P2P users, obtaining "snapshots" of the users' Internet protocol addresses, the files they are downloading or uploading from their P2P directories, the time that downloading occurs, and the Internet service provider (ISP) through which the files travel. (Gathering this information is not a violation of the users' privacy rights, because the user has voluntarily made his or her P2P directory available for public file sharing.)
Once this information is obtained, RIAA, MPAA and others can demand that an ISP remove any infringing copies from its system and may obtain a court order directing the ISP to identify the infringing user and to cut off the infringing user's access to the ISP's system. Further, if the user is determined to have infringed copyright rights, whether through P2P networks or other means, he or she can also be subject to sanctions such as the destruction of all unauthorized copies and monetary damages. In some cases, criminal sanctions - imprisonment and fines - may be imposed.
As an ISP for its students and faculty, USC has received an increasing number of notices from RIAA and MPAA identifying the IP addresses of USC students who are sharing copies of music and videos without authorization. USC will be forwarding such notices to the individual students involved and taking further steps to ensure that the infringing conduct ceases immediately, including, where necessary, depriving that student of any access to the USC computer system and further disciplinary sanctions. Obviously, if the complaining organization decides to take further steps to identify and prosecute the infringer, such conduct also runs the risk of incurring sanctions under federal copyright law, which can include monetary damages, and, in cases that are sufficiently extreme, criminal penalties - both imprisonment and fines. Copyright law provides no exception from liability for university students.
You should be aware that sharing music, videos, software, and other copyrighted material is a violation of law and can expose you and those with whom you share to legal sanctions, as well as sanctions under USC's own policy. Please do not put yourself, your friends, parents, and USC in the awkward position of having to confront such issues. We trust that you will take this issue seriously and conduct yourself accordingly.


Sincerely,
Jerry D. Campbell Dean of Libraries and Chief Information Officer

Sincerely,
Michael L. Jackson Vice President for Student Affairs

Univ. of Colorado at Boulder

[bwhaley]

I work for ITS at CU Boulder. We have very similar things in place here as well. Ours is a bit different, however. When a student moves in to the dorms they have to sign a document, a bit like a EULA. Nobody reads it. When browsing through the fine print you come across two interesting points (no link available, here they are in English):

Peer-to-Peer file sharing is a no-no

WAP's are bad news

Further reading indicates that you can get shut off for a short period for file sharing and have your jack turned off for good for having a WAP. Apparently last year somebody had an Airport up and it took down 3 floors in one of the dorms.

Both of those seem like pretty heavy penalties. That is *exactly* how the policy went at the beginning of this school year. I think they may have sent out another reminder about the wireless though. I guess they realized that nobody was reading the agreements and it wasn't fair to simply shut their jack's off with no warning.

Anyway.. guess Universities are getting tired of wasted bandwidth. Here [colorado.edu] is a graph of bandwidth usage at Boulder over the last 48 hours and here [colorado.edu] is the base site with lots of statistics, in case you're interested.

Ben

Re:Good

[_Sprocket_]

There basically is zero downside to banning P2P programs.

But then... what you're doing is going after the technology, not the pirates. Again.

Re:No. The issue is bandwidth I would think.

[thefalconer]

Exactly. Bandwidth at a University, although seemingly endless, is a precious, limited resource. So anyone P2P'ing is hogging precious bandwidth others can use for porn...er, gaming...er, studying, yea, that's what I ment. :)

Re:Good

[crush]

• 1. It's not "piracy". The very use of the word conflates the murder, rape and plunder of the passengers of sailing vessels with giving a free copy of a Britney Spears song to a buddy
• 2. They're not going after the "pirates", they *are* going after the *technology*: they ban P2P networks because the 9th Circuit found that most people that use P2P use it for swapping copyrighted material. You are COMPLETELY wrong on this point.
• 3. "Hat's off to you, USC" is ungrammatical. It means either "Hat is off to you, USC" or " belonging to Hat off to you USC".

If you're going to troll about filesharing make sure that you are both correct and cogent.

Re:Good

[MalleusEBHC]

They are NOT banning all P2P traffic. They are only saying that users caught illegally trading music will have their rights to use the university ISP revoked. Stories like this should not be posted without all the proper facts so people like this don't make false accusations.

Let's clear this up

[Webapprentice]

It seems nobody has gone to Cooper Union's website and do a little reading. Cooper Union is a private institution. It was founded by Peter Cooper, a wealthy industrialist in the 1800s. He also did this without ever learning to read. So, he took much of his money and set up The Cooper Union. The university runs on an endowment set up by the founder. Therefore, the school isn't paid for by taxes. Cooper Union does own real estate and land, so rents from people leasing the university's land and properities also help pay for the upkeep of the school. The tuition is completely paid for students. They still have to pay for books, an annual student fees, and living expenses (i.e. dorm), but the education itself is paid. The tuition's value is an estimate based on competing universities' tuitions that offer similar programs. By the way, it is really hard to get admitted into the school (this is also reinforced by several surveys, including U.S. News). There are less than 1000 matriculated students total, so there are no more than 150-200 freshman slots available. This is how the school can keep costs down for making tuitions free for students: limit the available seats.

Re:Even if it's MY Music?

[Billly Gates]

IT is not lawfull to willfilly break a copyright.

Can he create his own mp3's? Absolutely!

Can he share them to the world? No.

According to the "home recording act of 1992", fair use rights dictate that a user can create as many backups as he/she wants. But the lines at the university our not his and tax dollars should not be used to steal copyrighed works.

The reason I agree with this is because students need these lines for real legitimate work. Go read further down the comments from this story and read the one from a UK student. The guy has high speed ethernet, yet he can not get above 5k a sec! Kaza is everyhwere! I am glad I do not go to that school and own any fire arms. Its just not fair that a student can not download the latest debian distro or recieve large email files from other students working on a critical project due in only days, so Tommy could download obscure porn 24/7. ALso many researchers work at the university and need the connections to the web at full speed. Throdding down the the packets from the dormitory is not the answer either but sadly is becomming popular. The pirates will continue and the students will suffer even more if the dorms are throttled down.

If you want to share fine. Just do not do it on legitimate public access lines funded by the tax payers. If I was at a university with a very crippled internet connection due to piracy, you bet I would make a similiar case to the dean and head of IT and recommend USC's approach. That they should ban or restric piraters. You can mod me down if you like but I really love my gentoo linux box and my needs should be more important then someone who is doing something that is illegal. Gentoo would be unusable at anything under 20k a second.

Is it even your music?

[yerricde]

What if it's MY music? I cannot share it?

No, you cannot share it, because the music you think you wrote probably isn't your music. It belongs to the music publisher who published the particular sequence of four notes before you did. Under the "substantial similarity" standard used by United States courts, there are fewer than 50,000 possible distinct melodies in the Western musical scale [everything2.com], and there are hundreds of thousands of copyrighted songs published by major music publishers who have cross-licensing agreements with one another. Do the math. What's the probability of avoiding a lawsuit? What's the probability of winning if you can't afford legal representation?

Re:The actual email

[nexthec]

Um...I hate to break it to you but no university makes money on teaching students. Most of the cost is covered by Fedral/State funding and Research. Or if your a Private school, just research. At the average public school your tution pays abot 15%-25% of your education, and at private, a little higer (because its like 30 grand a year). and yes your tenure is based on Profitability....Its called "Publish or Perish". Thats the difference btween Associate Professors(take on the majority of the class load, with a little research) and Professors (who teach maybe 1 class a year, but bring in fat dough with research grants and private donations) Btw.....if anybepartment gets a research grant. about 50% of it is taken for administrative cost, by the University.

Re:Even if it's MY Music?

[shepd]

>IT is not lawfull to willfilly break a copyright
>Can he create his own mp3's? Absolutely!

Both Agreed.

>Can he share them to the world? No.

YES. If he makes the music himself (as in he is a musician, and at a university, one can expect some music courses) then he has complete distribution rights over it, unless he signs to a record company.

>The guy has high speed ethernet, yet he can not get above 5k a sec!

Incompetent administration is not an excuse to remove the basic rights of an individual. The answer to this is so simple, even me, an at-home armchair linux user can fix it. Here's some help [fibrespeed.net] for them, for free.

If the admins there were worth the money they were being paid this wouldn't be a problem. There's many, many, many solutions to this. Here's a list of them:

- Leaky bucket algorithm, similar to that used by DirecPC (annoying, but doesn't make Kazaa a showstopper).
- Hard download/upload limit (a showstopper for heavy Kazaa users, a non-problem for regular users).
- Pay-by-the-byte service. Offer enough transfer to allow a student to complete the course (lets say 2 GB). Anything after that is charged. (everyone is happy). If lots of people "abuse" the University service, enough money is paid into the "kitty" to increase the bandwidth, and everything is peachy.

>down the the packets from the dormitory is not the answer either but sadly is becomming popular.

One of my options suggests that, but the rest don't. And none of them are beyond the expertise of a regular administrator.

>That they should ban or restric piraters.

Agreed with the restriction part, but it should be either a monetary restriction, or a speed restriction. Anything else is controlling what the students can/can't do with the network directly, and could leave the University culpable for their offenses. [You'd be very surprised with how strange the law can get in these situations -- and remember, at a university you have law students].

>Gentoo would be unusable at anything under 20k a second.

I live in Canada, and like many Canadians, proper high-speed internet just isn't ever going to be where I live (well, maybe, but I doubt that gov't initiative is ever going through).

Yet I run 3 slackware machines, one redhat machine and two copies of Win XP (fully updated), and I've survived (although getting LookTV lately has helped ease the pain :).

You'd be surprised how much you can do even with a "slow" net connection.

Re:Even if it's MY Music?

[leviramsey]

If they are going to change our contrat in the middle of the game, I should be able to declare it void and demand a refund of my payments. Otherwise, it is unfair.

Unfortunately, your contract with the University (as far as tuition goes and so forth) is on a semester-by-semester basis. So the most you could do is withdraw from the university and get a refund of your tuition for that semester (subject to any refund fees specified in the contract).

Tenant? I do not think so..

[Anonymous Coward]

I had some issues with my University. After talking with a lawyer, it was determined that I had not signed a lease. Rather, it was a LICENSE.

They had all rights and I had none. I moved the next day..

Good Luck!

Re:Even if it's MY Music?

[dfenstrate]

As a tenant, I have certain rights. Primarily, the campus cannot waive my rights concerning search and seizure.

Almost true. I served as a Resident Assistant for two years, and in that time, our lawyers had cause to investigate this.

Basically, you have 4th amendment rights only as far as criminal prosecution is concerned. That means that our campus police, deputized by the town police, cannot search your room without a warrant.

However, being kicked out or otherwise sanctioned by the University is not a criminal procedure, only contractual actions. So that means a Resident Assistant or Hall Director could search your room, and the University could hold it against you in it's own internal sanction process.

That being said, U of New Hampshire's policy is to behave in a manner that offers 4th-amendment-like protections from all University staff, cause they don't want to be seen as the Gestopo.

55% of dorm traffic at Cornell is from Kazaa!

[tiohero]

P2P is an expensive problem for campuses. Here are some interesting statistics about network usage at Cornell University:

http://www.cit.cornell.edu/computer/students/bandw idth/charts.html [cornell.edu]

Over 55% of total dorm bandwidth was from Kazaa/Morpheus!