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Music Media Education Your Rights Online

More on the University of Florida 341

Posted by michael from the vote-with-your-tuition-dollars dept.
setzman writes "According to this article, the University of Florida has implemented a software program known as ICARUS (Integrated Control Application for Restricting User Services) to monitor student activities on the campus network. If a user downloads music or videos the system deems to be illegal, they will lose their connection and be punished by being forced to watch industry propaganda, lengthy suspensions of access, or even a written reprimand. Yet the system hasn't resulted in an increase in CD sales? Hmm... Maybe they will figure out another way to improve their failing business model?" We covered this some months ago but the Associated Press is just catching on.
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More on the University of Florida More

More on the University of Florida

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  • ICARUS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by einhverfr ( 238914 ) <chris...travers@@@gmail...com> on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:00AM (#7546518) Homepage Journal
    Wow. That is a name I want to base my business on.... We will have to see what the sun does to the wax that holds those wings together....

    I wonder if this is one more sign of a doomed music industry. How long until they fall into the sea?

  • The most disturbing thing... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Liselle ( 684663 ) * <slashdot@lisWELTYelle.net minus author> on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:01AM (#7546521) Journal
    ... even more than the loss of student's privacy, is the fact that other universities have approached these people about buying this ICARUS program.

    I'm all for respecting the copyright, but that doesn't extend to censoring my computer. It sounds a little shady to me. What they may end up doing is forcing students to add internet connectivity options to the college-selection process, which is a shame.

    • Re:The most disturbing thing... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by REBloomfield ( 550182 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:11AM (#7546549)
      erm... hello??? The University's internet connection is subject to terms of use, just as the one at the .edu where I'm the network admin is. Students want to use it, they sign to say they'll abide by the conditions. And that includes monitoring.

      There's no 'loss of privacy'. We don't sit and watch every mouse click you make you know, we do have other things to do as well.

      • Yes, the student's don't own the network, but, you must understand...the computers, networking equipment, and bandwith that everyone takes advantage of at an .edu wouldn't be there *if not for the students.*

        If you didn't have students attending...you wouldn't have jobs. That endowment that your university has only goes sooo far if you're not generating alumni money...and how much do you think John Q. Public is going to donate after you shut off little Johnny's net connection? After you field the angry ca

        • Re:The most disturbing thing... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by yiantsbro ( 550957 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @08:55AM (#7546833)
          mmmmm...yeah...and law enforcement wouldn't be there if not for my tax dollars. So they should stay the hell out of my business right? Bother those who do not pay taxes.

          I understand your direction, but just because student tuition (might) account for the bulk of the yearly budget (it is about 65% at our University) doesn't simply buy their freedom.
          • Wow. Stupid me. And here I thought that the idea behind law enforcment was -- heh -- to enforce the law. Not to tally your tax bill and let you buy your way out of prosecution.

            So the richest 10% of the country pays 90% of the nation's tax bill -- we let them all off the hook for the crimes that only they can afford to perpetrate anyway?
      • "Students want to use it, they sign to say they'll abide by the conditions. And that includes monitoring."

        And students who value freedom, will choose a university which doesn't make a point of allowing unscrupulous 'businesses' to search peoples' data.

      • So suppose a student had a large CD collection that was at their parents' house. And instead of bringing it with them to uni, they decided to download the music they wanted via Kazaa from the computer at their parents' house.

        Is it right to ban a student from using the network for that ? What if they were doing it via ftp ? Should they still be banned ?

        • Personally, I'd say it was an inappropriate use of bandwidth. And we'd write it in to the next draft of our AUP, so that all the students knew it was. The first catch would be punished, just warned.

          • Re:The most disturbing thing... (Score:4, Insightful)

            by lonb ( 716586 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @10:00AM (#7547177) Homepage
            I think the significant point that you are missing is that the Internet connection at Universities is NOT just for academics and research. For most students university is their whole life for several years, but especially the first year: when they LIVE on campus, EAT on campus, often WORK on campus. In the 12/1 issue of "BusinessWeek" statistics from The College Board show that the average costs of attending private colleges in 2004 will have risen to close to $50k/year -- state unis are probably not far behind.

            It is ridiculous to believe that a student, who pays a fortune, and makes that university their life, does not have the right to use the Internet connection HOWEVER they feel, as long as it is not illegal. And, frankly, I do not believe it should be the universities job to monitor their usage in anyway (other than to maintain the stability of the network, or maybe for pure research) or to restrict their usage even if to maintain legality.

            Let the law do the law's work.

            And, to finish my rant, let me also say: The more restriction university's put on their students, the less creativity we will see. What would have happened to the Internet had Stanford stopped Yahoo's traffic because it damaged the 'network and was an unsupervised host on the network.

        • Yes, the university network is for RESEARCH and ACADEMICS, period. Most places don't stick to that 100%, but usually the TOS you sign bans even personal e-mails over the network. Of course this is rarely inforced, but the point is that the internet connection just can't be used for whatever the student wants. It is a very standard practice.
      • True, but Universities have always been extremely sensitive to academic freedom and research. I would be suprised if no protest or unwanted publicity is not garnered by this little software product. Also, given the competition for enrolling students nationwide, I wonder how quickly they will fold after receiving a "little" bad press.
      • Of course you don't sit and monitor every mouse click--that's what ICARUS is for. You don't see the privacy implications? If it were an admin, there's the possibility for human error and abuse. If it were a machine, there's a possibility for machine error and human (programmed) abuse. If you're denying that the machine monitors every packet being sent to the computer, you misunderstand the technology. If you're denying that you, as an admin, would have a part in this because you "don't sit and watch e

    • Re:The most disturbing thing... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cgranade ( 702534 ) <cgranadeNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:30AM (#7546598) Homepage Journal
      To me the most disturbing thing is that "violators" (note the quotes, folks!) are forced to watch **AA FUD/disinfo/propoganda. Since when is it acceptable for a publically owned university to spew off corporate propoganda? And yet, few ppl even blink at it. Sad, folks. Just fucking sad.
      • To me the most disturbing thing is that "violators" (note the quotes, folks!) are forced to watch **AA FUD/disinfo/propoganda. Since when is it acceptable for a publically owned university to spew off corporate propoganda? And yet, few ppl even blink at it. Sad, folks. Just fucking sad.

        Well, I guess the alternative is to collect names and notify the RIAA/MPAA of your copyright violations so they can sue you. I'd personally rather sit through propoganda, but whatever floats your boat. The easy way to av

        • Re:The most disturbing thing... (Score:5, Informative)

          by shepd ( 155729 ) <slashdot.org@gmai l . c om> on Monday November 24, 2003 @08:07AM (#7546688) Homepage Journal
          >The easy way to avoid either penalty is to STOP STEALING.

          Actally the easiest (and cheapest!) way to avoid those penalties is to start stealing.

          Shoplifting a CD from a record store carries far, far, far fewer penalties than downloading even a single track from the same disc. Even if they hit you with the maximum the law allows you're still way ahead of what most people get for settling out of court with the RIAA.

          Think about it. Who's really doing the stealing here?

        • Re:The most disturbing thing... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 24, 2003 @08:11AM (#7546701)
          The easy way to avoid either penalty is to STOP STEALING.

          How about you stop calling it stealing and start calling it copyright infringement, which is what it really is.

          The current state of copyright is getting out of hand; when I download, it is an act of civil disobedience. In effect, it is when anyone downloads copyrighted material. They are breaking the law because they don't feel they should keep to it.
        • I don't know about the US but in the UK it's not stealing because theft is criminal law and copyright is civil law. You will not get arrested for copying files but can be sued. You will get arrested for shoplifting a CD.

    • Re:The most disturbing thing... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What is also disturbing is the future potential. What happens when ISPs start using it? They decide to censor, oh, porn... Homeland Security secretly subpoenas ISPs for those who got bounced a certain number of times... you get the idea. Not that I'm a paranoid, tinfoil-hat-wearing weirdo, but there is definitely potential for great misuse here, particularly of the Orwellian kind.

    • Re:The most disturbing thing... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by kramer2718 ( 598033 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @08:55AM (#7546840) Homepage
      You're right. The university has every right to monitor usage...

      And talented students and faculty have every right to attend other institutions that don't impose unreasonable restrictions.
    • I work for a college IT Dept. Pretty much most of our concern isn't what they are downloading as much as how much bandwidth it's taking up. We ended up buying a Packet Shaper to limit P2P traffic to practially nothing, and it's not just because of copyright issues, it's because it was sucking 75% of the Internet bandwidth at any one point in time to the point that Internet speed was around 3KB/s.

      Bandwidth isn't cheap. It was either Block the P2P Traffic or Double the Technology fee. so we chose to block it

  • I'm a student... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mortin ( 538824 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:02AM (#7546523) Homepage
    Let me tell you first hand that this is one sneaky system. I lived in the dorms over the summer when it was implemented and they didn't even inform the students. All of the sudden my connection was just off. I wasn't downloading ANYTHING, I just had kazaa open in the background (not sharing any files).

    I am one of the proud 100 students caught twice mentioned in that article. Now I have my own house off-campus with cable modem service. Hell, it beats using a proxy to destroy ICARUS (it isn't smart enough to monitor packet contents, just destination). Thank God I'm transferring to University of Michigan.

    • sneaky system ? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Sad Loser ( 625938 ) * on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:13AM (#7546553)
      It would be interesting to see if sales of CDR and DVDRs went up.
      Also, what is to stop an informal, peer to peer wireless service starting up?
      All the authorities probably want is to not be liable to the RIAA. They don't care whether you download songs or not, they just don't want the RIAA knocking at their door. They are also picking up the tab for all that bandwidth as well.

      They probably realise that their students will get round it anyway, or if they don't, it doesn't say much for the ingenuity of UF students.
      • Also, the students probably don't have enough "disposable income" to buy any more CDs or DVDs they already do, even if they couldn't get them from the 'net. So effectively they're only cutting students' access to some music (and not very successfully at that, I presume), thus basically hurting their own marketing exposure and future sales. Well, I suppose that's a good thing :-)
    • I'm sure the intent of any student is only to open Kazaa for the pop-up ads and data mining cookies, not to down load (or upload) illegal copies of music.

      I have a daughter in college, and I believe that they have blocked download sites, not for legal purposes (at least not entirely for those), but to conserve in the enormous bandwidth that those sites were consuming.

  • Business model? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by m00nun1t ( 588082 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:02AM (#7546526) Homepage
    Maybe I'm missing something but I didn't think the University of Florida had a "...failing business model". Maybe they are just doing it so they don't get in trouble? They are a University and it could be argued they are well within their rights to limit their exposure.
    • well, I dont know if I would call it failing. But lets just look at their business model.

      Students pay thousands of dollars to go to the school.
      University installs big brother system
      They dont have to worry about the RIAA coming after the university now.
      Students get the shaft
      University sells out
      so do they make money or just loose their soul?

  • Ahh! (Score:3, Funny)

    by metlin ( 258108 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:04AM (#7546530) Journal
    We covered this some months ago but the Associated Press is just catching on.

    To be translated as --

    We know you're gonna scream repeat, but we're gonna repeat it anyway. :-p

  • WARNING: Illegal behavior detected!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Genjurosan ( 601032 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:07AM (#7546536)
    This notice is to inform you that your access has been suspended to the campus network due to the fact that you have been browsing yro.slashdot.com.

    In order to continue your so-called education you must sit with one of our thought process councilors to discuss your perspective on the illegal action of downloaded music.

    Please go to the campus library and navigate to www.riaa.com/uflorida to register for your session.

    Thank you,

    Mr. Charrington

  • Hate to break it to you... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by zelurxunil ( 710061 ) <zelurxunil@g m a i l . com> on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:07AM (#7546537) Homepage Journal
    It is the universities internet connection they are providing to students, and is subject to their policies of use. If students want to download illegal content, they have the freedom to attain their own internet connection through some other means.

    • Re:Hate to break it to you... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by 0123456 ( 636235 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:10AM (#7546546)
      And presumably those students will be refunded the amount they've paid for Internet access in their fees, if they're not provided with that access?

      No, didn't think so.

      • Re:Hate to break it to you... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by REBloomfield ( 550182 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:16AM (#7546566)
        Damn right they won't be refunded. They were given the Acceptable Use Policy when they signed up, they knew the rules, and they broke them. It's really quite simple....

        • Re:Hate to break it to you... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by cgranade ( 702534 ) <cgranadeNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:21AM (#7546576) Homepage Journal
          But can they opt out of purchasing access altogether? No... they are a captive audience. They must accept the rules in order to be successful at that or any other college. Since the acceptance of rules is not based in choice, it is a weak acceptance at best. Thus, many people have little qualms in breaking rules that they saw very little chance to complain about.
          • Kind of like accepting the laws of the country you had 'no choice' of being born into? Very weak argument.
            • Actually, not like that. If you don't like the laws you're born into, and you are born into some form of a democracy, in theory you can vote out those who made the laws you hate, and vote in ppl to replace those laws with ones more ameniable to your taste. In a university, what? Go to another university? They'd have the same rules. The survival of a university (at least for now) does not depend on their IT having fair rules.
          • Yes, they have no choice but to accept the rules. But the rules are based on the law, which makes it different. They can't do illegal activities in the dorms, and they pay for those. If they were filtering based on porn, or politics, or some other non-illegal criteria, you would have a point. But the fact is they are filtering based on what is legal, which they have every right to do.

            • Re:Hate to break it to you... (Score:4, Insightful)

              by 0123456 ( 636235 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @08:15AM (#7546708)
              "But the fact is they are filtering based on what is legal, which they have every right to do."

              So you're saying that their software is able to determine what's a legal download and what's not? Wow! That's an absolutely amazing step in software engineering, why didn't the original poster point that out? Lawyers are going to be obsolete overnight!
        • And, as others have pointed out, they were given no alternative to that policy: the students are, after all, the customers who pay the bills, and that kind of behaviour would not be acceptable in pretty much any other field of commerce.

          Universities are lucky that businesses are still stupid enough to hire people based on pieces of paper rather than ability and experience: there's really little reason to support them otherwise given the nonsense they're pulling these days.
          • I've got a strong feeling most of the Fortune 500 companies also have an acceptable use policy, and I bet the consequences are a tad stronger too.... I would hope that any field of commerce that offers a service has regulations of service. Just because you disagree doesn't mean you've got free reign to breach them and then cry about it.
            • How many ISPs ban P2P users, or force them to go to commie-style 'reeducation' sessions?

              Again, you're confusing students with employees: students are the university's customers, even though the university managers may believe they can treat those customers like crap with no repercussions (and, to an extent, they're right, since they have a nice little racket going where the customers need the university to give them a piece of paper to get a well-paid job). No-one would be complaining if the universities b
      • Oh fucking please, that is the most tired argument I've ever heard. By that logic if I choose not to use the school's gym (say, because I don't approve of their rules of the basketball court) then I shouldn't have to pay that part of the fees. And if I never set foot on the school's track, why am I paying for its upkeep anyway? Damn the bus system, I have a car, why should I pay for that?

        The answer is simple, everybody pays the same fees. The facilities would not exist if they were only paid for by the
    • You forgot one basic thing here. Universities are not private entities. They are PUBLIC and funded by tax money. People pay tax thinking that this money would be spent for something good for the society. So any action or policy of public entities are suppos to be keeping that point in mind. Unlike private entities, public ones cant do whatever they wish like. The actions of universities are to be seen in this context. Does the restrictions they impose on the students are for their good ? I dont think so. I
      • Universities are not private entities. They are PUBLIC and funded by tax money. People pay tax thinking that this money would be spent for something good for the society.

        While I have moral qualms about this icarus thing, the question must be asked. Should the public pay for students to pirate music and movies?

    • If students want to download illegal content, they have the freedom to attain their own internet connection through some other means.

      How does connecting to Kazaa equate to downloading illegal content? There's plenty of public domain (expired-copyright or free from creation) content on there, isn't there?

      If the use of file sharing services is considered wrong just because they could be abused, they should cut people off for using HTTP, NNTP, POP3/IMAP/SMTP, IRC, FTP, and so on, because people might be

      • Yes, it can have legitimate uses, blah blah blah, but the fact is, most people don't use it for that, and even the legitimate uses probably don't cover necessary use as part of their studies, so it's blocked, plain and simple.

  • I'm confused (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kinnell ( 607819 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:08AM (#7546541)
    Yet the system hasn't resulted in an increase in CD sales? Hmm... Maybe they will figure out another way to improve their failing business model?

    Does the University of florida sell CDs? Is the drop in CD sales affecting the sources of income for the University of florida? If not, isn't this a stupid comment? If the RIAA were blackmailing the university into implementing this then I would agree that this is a rights violation, but get real: the University of Florida is perfectly well entitled to take steps to ensure it's network isn't used for illegal purposes, not to mention monitoring the use of it's resources. Yes, downloading copyrighted material is illegal, whether you think this is right or wrong. If you don't like this, go to a different university, or get a private net connection.

    • Well actually... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ...downloading copyrighted material is perfectly legal if you have permission to do so.
    • People only have so much money, particularly students. Ten albums will rake up a bill of $150. Many, such as myself, are boycotting the industry. They couldn't've sustained their previous momentum forever, and pissing a lot of people off didn't help.

      As for the morality of copying music, I'd rather copy the music I want than send money into a legal fund that's attacking children and the elderly.

      The RIAA's inflated numbers have to be re-interpretted as well. iTunes hurts CD sales, as does tuition an
  • The only people profiting from the RIAA Shenanigans seems to be software companies that are designing anit copyright infringement technologies.

    I only download stuff I would have never bought in the first place, or stuff I Can't buy because it hasn't had a UK release. Not allowingme to download these files doesn't make me buy the CD's or DVD's I just find something else to do.
    • I only download ... stuff I Can't buy because it hasn't had a UK release.

      Even if for some reason you are completely unable to find any of the many UK-based importers, you do realise that many online vendors ship overseas, right? If you want American stuff, amazon.com would love to help you (as would dozens of smaller online shops). Want Japanese goodies? Well, for example, there's this place called amazon.co.jp...

  • Be CAREFUL University of FLorida (Score:5, Interesting)

    by shirai ( 42309 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:16AM (#7546563) Homepage
    I might not agree with what the university is doing, but in this case the university can differentiate between the private property (the computer) and the public property (the bandwidth). Note I didn't say I agree with them but at least they are making this separation to the students.

    However, one thing I think the University is doing that they need to be VERY CONCERNED with for themselves (and not the students) is that they are now EDITORIALIZING. In other words, they are now saying they have looked at the content and this makes them RESPONSIBLE FOR IT. As soon as you do this, you are legally in a much worse position than you were before.

    A bookstore that claims that it has reviewed the titles on its shelves is in a worse position than one that hasn't. It cannot now claim that it didn't know that there was lewd material in one of its books.

    This is dangerous because once the law considers it the norm for a university to monitor its bandwidth usage (and not just the amount of bandwidth but the content), they are now open to litigation much more easily. In the end, it is possible that universities might just have to forego much of their Internet access to protect themselves legally. A lose-lose situation for everyone.
    • I don't think it's quite that simple. I can monitor without looking at content at all.

      F'rinstance if I see traffic on port 1214 I can be reasonably certain you're running Kazaa. If I see traffic on port 6667 it's pretty safe to assume you've got an IRC client running - if I wanted to do a bit of packet analysis I could even tell if you were running ircd on the school network.

      sysadmins can monitor the network without monitoring content, I'm afraid.

    • In other words, if one of their students now finds a way around ICARUS and is caught by the RIAA, the university is also liable. They took the obligation of monitoring their networks thereby becoming responsible for the actions that take place on that network. So the civil disobediance reaction to this policy is clear: find a work around, do it anyway, and when you get caught take the univerity down with you. Not that I am advocating that or anything, there is almost always a more legal way to protest, but

  • Re Icarus (Score:5, Interesting)

    by po8 ( 187055 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:17AM (#7546568)

    You may recall [island-ikaria.com] Icarus as the son of Daedalus. Daedalus was an early technological innovator, who developed wings to allow himself and his son to escape the prison they were confined in by King Minos. Minos was angry that Daedalus had given a citizen the key to the maze that Minos had required Daedalus to build for Minos' benefit. Unfortunately, Icarus tried to exploit his father's wing technology incautiously, thus bringing destruction on himself and grief and guilt to his father.

    Not that there's a modern metaphor there anywhere...okay, maybe. Key:

    • Daedalus = the /. crowd
    • Icarus = the general computer-using public
    • wings = peer-to-peer networking
    • prison = DMCA
    • King Minos = RIAA/MPAA etc.
    • key = DeCSS etc.
    • maze = copy prevention
    • incautiously = without adequate anonymity
    • destruction = massive lawsuits, etc.
    But you knew this...
    • Forgetting something important: what's the sun? What is that which melts the wings of Icarus? What pervasive, omnipresent force that can both kill and bring life caused the death of Icarus? I think that it is a worldview brought about by the internet: the world itself as information. The reprecussions of this can bring about the apogee of humanity, and its end, albeit indirectly.
    • But isn't it more likely they were trying to suggest that if the students fly too high, they'll crash and burn? I guess you could say that the program = either the sun or Daedalus (depending on your point of view.) From the /. perspective *we* are wise and know better, from the Net Admin's perspective, they're trying to prevent the greater evil of the RIAA. Is this making sense?

      program = the sun - censorship & annoyance for students
      program = Daedalus - Benevolent Admins trying to prevent destruction
      You

    • Re:Re Icarus (Score:5, Funny)

      by Diabolical ( 2110 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @08:05AM (#7546682) Homepage
      The general computer-using public as an offspring of us? Ewww....

      ... note to moderators: sarcasm ...

  • What is the goal? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Ringel ( 31107 )
    I suspect that this has very little to do with wanting to keep illegal content off the network, and almost everything to do with not wanting to deal with the administrative load of DMCA takedown notices. Network admins for a large university have much better things to do with their time than file/track/answer notifications w/r/t music that their students are sharing on well-known-and-trackable p2p networks.

    The goal is noble, it's just not the one that the RIAA would like to trumpet.

  • I'm one of the students that was caught (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:28AM (#7546590)
    I'm not even sure where to begin but I was caught by the system. The first time around it was simply a matter of them explaining why. They set the ground rules when I spoke with them, I learned well during a 20 minute conversation with the system network admin.

    I strayed off the path a bit just recently and fired up kazaa to see if i could find some music they were playing on the university radio station. I wasn't strong enough to stay away from the copyrighted materials :( The system got me again.

    I've been without inet access for a few months now, sucks but I'm getting better now. I dont think about ripping off artists much anymore and the riaa video was actually quite informative (better than my psychology classes at least.) If I can keep this up for a few more months I'll be set, I'll hopefully never consider downloading music that I dont own... Downloading music aint right and thats the truth.

  • How is this bad? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by geirhe ( 587392 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:54AM (#7546650)
    Network connections at university do not come from a horn of plenty. They cost money. A lot of money. The internet connections are there to help the students learn. All rhetoric aside - Kazaa doesn't teach anyone anything you need to know at a university. Being able to see the cost of using things like Kazaa is, however, a sought-after skill. We need more people like that where I work, at least.

    I don't think the other students should have to foot the bill for those who want to use huge amounts of bandwidth. Those who want to swap can get their own, private internet connection.

    When a private ISP does this, I will care.

    • The university I'm at has a simple policy to avoid running out of bandwidth: they monitor bandwidth use per IP address (or per physical network socket, I'm not sure which way they run it). If you consistently use too much (where "too much" roughly means "enough to inconvenience everyone else"), they tell you to stop. In theory, if you keep using too much, they disconnect you, but in practice most people get the hint after the first warning or two. Formally, we aren't told what the limit is; informally, I've

    • Network connections at university do not come from a horn of plenty. They cost money.

      This has nothing to do with the cost of bandwidth. Never did.

      If it did, effective solutions would have been put into place. Traffic shaping to reduce the bandwidth to acceptable levels. Maybe the acceptable level is zero, so you block access entirely. Or (a bit more extremely) hosting a local service to keep the bandwidth internal and cheap. These are all reasonable ideas.

      Instead they're randomly scanning for us

  • False-positive? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mcbridematt ( 544099 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:55AM (#7546652) Homepage Journal
    Didn't NPR run an article on this? But NPR's article stated that using P2P AT ALL will trigger the warning.

    Thats got me worried.

    P2P CAN Be used as a legimate software distribution medium. i.e FreeBSD and some other free software tend to get a lot of hits on my upload queue.

    So, if users were getting Linux ISO's over p2p in the university/corporate network, and this software triggers false warnings, who knows what will happen.

  • Strange... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheDredd ( 529506 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:58AM (#7546663)
    ...because 12 year old children get sued for thousands of dollars and students "will lose their connection and be punished by being forced to watch industry propaganda, lengthy suspensions of access, or even a written reprimand.".

    Sounds fair to me
  • Well if this dosen't illustrate the need for a fully encrypted p2p network I don't know what does. Can you say... tunnel it all through SSL? IRC [link-net.org] has been doing this for ages...

  • What to do? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tymbow ( 725036 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @08:09AM (#7546694)
    I never know how to think about this sort of stuff anymore. On one hand they are breaking the law (no matter how unjustified it may seem) and it is the Universities network. I seem to remember many Uni's whining about how much bandwidth they were having to provide then finding out 80% of it was used to download music, pr0n and warez.

    I mean, if you walk into a shop and steal CDs... we all know what will happen.

    On the other hand, this whole music model with the RIAA (and similar organisations outside the US) sucking us dry has got to die.

    So, it the downloading of music a form of protest or free speech, or is it simply breaking the laws of the land?

  • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • It's about bandwidth, which p2p systems eat like Americans sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner.

  • NewsGroups??? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mm0mm ( 687212 )
    how about good ol' newsgroups? sounds like ICA-R-US works only on P2P file sharing. or does it detect alt.binaries.****s? I doubt it does.

    you know, sometimes it's a good idea to step backwards, live in the old style, and survive well in this world controlled by a few in power. I'm talking about "school," of course. :p

  • "According to this article, the University of Florida has implemented a software program known as ICARUS (Integrated Control Application for Restricting User Services) to monitor student activities on the campus network. If a user downloads music or videos the system deems to be illegal, they will lose their connection and be punished by being forced to watch industry propaganda, lengthy suspensions of access, or even a written reprimand. Yet the system hasn't resulted in an increase in CD sales? Hmm... May

  • What about a Waste Network? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by lhpineapple ( 468516 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @08:45AM (#7546807)
    With all benefits of ICARUS aside, can't it be circumvented with something like Waste?

  • A different solution (Score:3, Informative)

    by spenceM7 ( 683840 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @08:55AM (#7546836)

    At my school, Cornell University, they simply charge you for any bandwidth you use over 2GB/month. (At about $3/GB). Basically, you can do what you want on the net, but if you're a heavy downloader, you're going to pay to support that habit. (There have been a few people shut down, but those were the idiots downloading several feature-length movies, etc. a day, and they were shut down for using WAY too much of their dorm's available bandwidth).

    And yes, there is an acceptable use policy, but as I use iTMS, that doesn't really affect me.

  • Just like a certain college near me requires students attending to live in dorms the first couple of semesters and bans all sex, public display of affection, dancing between different sex people, and non-christian music with the punishment of suspension and expulsion, they will lose buisness. Of course, they won't tell you about what they're doing. Oh no, they'll give you the rulebook after you sign up and have given them your money, not before.

    This one reeks of a scam. Stay away from the university o
  • If arttendance was down 20 percent next semester I bet there would be a change in attitude.
  • "Yet the system hasn't resulted in an increase in CD sales?"

    How is this a surprise? Most college students don't have much money to spare, Internet restrictions or not.
  • Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters.

    Let's not forget "When it Matters". Too much of today's published news is either (1) filler that seeks only to improve readership rather than to inform or (2) commentary meant to spice it up when it actually only inserts bias into a story in order to remove or disguise the facts. (Reminder: thoughtful commentary that reeks of research is fine; overly flamboyant commentary is too stylish for a "just the facts ma'am" approach, which is what I want from the news r

  • BitTorrent (Score:3, Informative)

    by Rufus211 ( 221883 ) <rufus-slashdotNO@SPAMhackish.org> on Monday November 24, 2003 @09:25AM (#7547001) Homepage
    From what I'm reading it seems that if you simply connect to Kazzaa you get kicked, doesn't even bother checking what you're doing. I can't wait untill they start doing this for BitTorrent. Because we all know that anything that can be used for something illegal [suprnova.org] has no [bitconjurer.org] possible [scarywater.net] legal [gametab.com] use [duke.edu]

  • Traffic Shaping (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GreenKiwi ( 221281 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @09:31AM (#7547027)
    Why not just setup traffic shaping.

    At the school that I went to, when Napter and then Kazaa became a problem (i.e. was eating up too much of the colleges upstream/downstream bandwidth), the network admins just applied some traffic shaping to it. They gave 4500 students 30kbps of bandwidth. That stopped 99% of the downloading.

    These sorts of content filtering seem silly, as all it will do is speed up the transition to encrypted, hard to trace solutions.

  • Surprise surprise... (Score:3, Funny)

    by slipgun ( 316092 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @09:32AM (#7547034)
    Yet the system hasn't resulted in an increase in CD sales?

    More likely to have resulted in an increase in blank CD sales.

  • Why download? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by El ( 94934 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @10:13AM (#7547259)
    You're in a dorm with hundreds of other students, all with access to CD burners. Blank CDs cost $0.20. Have everybody chip in $0.25 for one copy of each CD you all want, then burn copies for everybody. Hey, if you're going to be treated like criminals, might as well do it right -- in this case it greatly lessens your chances of getting caught!

  • Let's take this one step further... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by El ( 94934 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @10:23AM (#7547314)
    Why don't they hire detectives to tail the students to the local library? I hear you can check out CDs there and listen to the for FREE! Of course, the collection there leans more to classical than to Britney Spears...

  • Bad justification (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bluesnowmonkey ( 148168 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @12:53PM (#7548588)
    Hmm... Maybe they will figure out another way to improve their failing business model?

    A few weeks ago, we held a forum on "Net Piracy" here at my school of Texas A&M. It wasn't really a forum, with the connotation of public discussion, but more of a presentation by the speakers. Attending were a local professor of communications, an author of a book on the subject, an MPAA vice president, and US Representative John Carter. They gave some very good speeches and then answered some presubmitted questions.

    I was a pretty frustrated that I was not going to get a chance to ask a question. I had some very good ones! Then someone from the audience said something about originality, interrupting one of the speakers. The moderator asked him to clarify, and this guy in the audience launched into a diatribe about how formulaic are all the current movies and music, and how people would be more willing to pay money for it if it was more original.

    Jesus Fucking Christ.

    There were a lot of things that needed to be said at that forum. The US Representative was using "steal" and "pirate" as if they meant the same thing as "download" and "share." This guy is making our country's laws based on a powerful, industry-sponsored misconception. Why the hell would someone bring up this originality bullshit? That's something you complain about with your buddies. It's not something you use as justification for copyright violations before a member of the United States House of Representatives. Way to give us all a bad name, idiot.

    This "failing business model" crap is just one more example of the same problem. You can sit around with your friends (or on Slashdot, if that is your only friend) and talk about how weak RIAA's and MPAA's business model is, but you don't use that as justification for breaking it.

    I think the ideal would look a lot like iTunes, with all music, movies, and TV shows available for download at a low price. That would be great for everyone. The people who produce it get paid, the people who want it get it whenever they want. Guess what? That business model has a lot of potential to fail. People will download the stuff, crack its encryption, and share it. There's nothing wrong with the business model, it's the assholes you see all around you that don't follow the rules.

    I resent the whining camera prop commercial they play before movies as much as the next guy, and Britney Spears spews nothing but bullshit, but seriously, they really do need to get paid. Actors get paid too much (by my standards), and music labels don't compensate musicians well, but they REALLY DO NEED TO GET PAID. There's no justification here for downloading music and movies you should be paying for. If you don't want to buy it, you don't get it. Life goes on.

  • The solution (Score:3, Funny)

    by Eudial ( 590661 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @02:45PM (#7549580)
    Rename all your warez, movies and mp3s to stuff such as "Submarine_engine_distortion.mp3", "The_development_of_a_maggot.avi" and "statistic_calculator.exe"

  • Propoganda? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @05:56PM (#7551519) Homepage
    Does anybody here know what the RIAA propoganda they're subjected to is exactly? Is it a video? A webpage? I'm really curious what these students are being subjected to by the RIAA.

    I mean, if you have to take some sort of Copyright ethics class, personally I'd love to get busted and be forced to take that, just to point out exactly what is wrong with it.

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