What am I meant to tell the researcher whose medical images hadn’t finished transferring when he arrived in the morning? You wouldn’t hoax call an ambulance now would you?

Breach terms of service and you get disconnected. This happens every day in universities across the world. Get over it.[/quote]

Lol, you totally missed the point of this article. Being disconnected and having private property illegally accessed are, well, as different from each other as the shores on different continents. Get over yourself and your misplaced confidence. Lrn2read.

In a meeting with myself and multiple staff members on this issue, I was asked to “collaborate” on “education in downloading” and university policies. I have declined to participate and instead teach students in biology labs (77 of them) how to use torrent files. I will continue to teach this in all of my classes until students don’t have to pay hundreds of dollars towards ms office, etc. Open-source, by way of torrents, is the way to go.

Please be aware, when the university threatened me with suing for illegal downloading, I was confused, but unworried. My only crime here is bandwidth consumption, not copyright infringment. The administrators were under the impressoin I was downloading illegal files. This is simply untrue, I am all for open-source software and don’t use windows, etc.

This all boils down to one thing; a mistake on UNC’s IT department. Hopefully everyone who is a graduate student, or an undergraduate, is aware that some uinversity administrations follow U.S. government tactics and do what they want to whom they want. The IT department at UNC is unique in how they handled-and continues to handle-downloading of anykind.

Keep up the file sharing.

Sam

Anyways, yeah pretty bad. That guy should be fired and so should his boss. I would sue too!

If you want to quote rules, hows about the prohibited usage
number 14 – Unauthorized modification of or deletion of another person’s files, account or posting; altering or attempting to alter files or systems without authorization – would seem to apply, as would 15 – Use of computer resources or electronic information without authorization or beyond one’s level of authorization

maybe even number 2 – Any person who knowingly uses any computer, computer system, computer network or any part thereof for the purpose of devising or executing any scheme or artifice to defraud; obtain money, property, or service by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises; using the property or services of another without authorization; or committing theft

Oh, and don’t forget number 9 – Interference with or disruption of the computer, telephone or network accounts, services or equipment of others is prohibited.

I’m not a lawyer, but there may even be a violation of number 1 as well

Those are clear prohibited usage, and those actions were committed by the staff member.

What are the penalties for abuse or violation? Abuse of computing and electronic communication privileges can be a matter of legal action or official campus disciplinary procedures. Depending upon the seriousness of an offense, violation of the procedure can result in penalties ranging from reprimand (e.g. don’t do this any more), to loss of access to referral to university authorities for disciplinary action. In order to sustain reasonable performance and secure services for the rest of the user community, the computing facility may immediately suspend an individual’s access privileges. Access to UNC computing and communication resources may be wholly or partially restricted by the University without prior notice and without consent of the user:
If required by applicable law, policy or procedure
If there is a reasonable suspicion that there has been or may be a violation of law, regulation, procedure, or policy
If required to protect the integrity or operation of the computing and communication resources or when the resources are required for more critical tasks as determined by appropriate management authority.

Any decent admin would have simply throttled the connection down using traffic shaping tools available on just about every commercial router and ALL Linux distros. If he didn’t want people to use up 6mbit for P2P, he could have locked it down to e.g. 250kbit per person, or any other arbitrary number.

If he had been anal yet skilled, he could have blocked the ports used by the P2P, or even disconnected that specific user from the network without ever leaving his office. I run several servers halfway around the world, and I can precisely control who does what and how fast they do it. If I get unwanted visitors, I block their IP or MAC address. If someone’s trying to DDoS, I limit the rate of incoming connections. My stuff is actually more difficult as I’m dealing with the entire Internet full of strangers. The university only deals with a controlled number of clients and they “know” everyone.

This admin was just looking for attention. He made a huge fiasco out of a non-event to drive some ulterior motives, like maybe he wants to be portrayed as a “hero” and get a raise or other perks. Maybe he had a personal grudge against that student and abused his privileges to attack him. Nobody knows, but either way I’d have this guy fired!

Lets just remember that not only did they have the option of terminating remotely, it’s built into their system. The resnet at UNCO is a subscriptio service – if you don’t pay, you don’t have access. Thus they enable via MAC, and so disabling via MAC is not only feasable, its an integral part of the system.

I suggest he read his “Acceptable Use Policy” from the school and see how he violated it before he cries too much. I agree they shouldn’t touch privately owned machines but that could have been an oversight if the school owns Macs.

1. Labs are secured and typically only those with explicit access can enter them; how did this IT guy get in or who let him in?

2. Who leaves their system sitting there without locking it or enabling the screen saver + password? That is retarded

3. P2P use is a huge problem for universities all over the country. I think this student is a liar.

Our policy is NO personal equipment on campus. We provide computers for the faculty and staff. Hubs and routers are strictly not allowed unless we provide and set them up.

What am I meant to tell the researcher whose medical images hadn’t finished transferring when he arrived in the morning? You wouldn’t hoax call an ambulance now would you?

Breach terms of service and you get disconnected. This happens every day in universities across the world. Get over it.”

Well said! Agree 100%, and for those of you crying out ‘invasion of privacy”…Get real for a minute, he does NOT own the property he was staying at, and ANY member of staff CAN enter that area with or without reason, whenever they please, especially in situations like this, if I were having difficulty getting important information thanks to someone choking the bandwidth then I’d expect that person’s connection to be shut off, using any means necessary.

I would be pressing charges if I were him.

Riiiiggghhttt…..

Also, technically those ‘numbers of wires in the wall’ are Loc’s or Locations. Yes, a lot of times when a Performance Monitoring group sees a heavy user they send someone from local IT to find out what the device is. Usually it’s with the expectation that someone’s work comp is infected with a virus and is spamming the crap out of the world. Just this time they got Bob Dumbass torrenting porn or music. Yes you could perform a shut on the switch port or whatever but that doesn’t really resolve the issue if Joe Clueless’ virus infected laptop is still infected. Joe would just call IT and ask why his internet is out.

I like this blog and it’s posts most of the time. In fact, I like every post I’ve read so far here from Digg… except this one.

Read the article. If you did your repugnant head would be able to comprehend we’re talking an individual’s rights. The fact that you get to say what you say, is because people like us fight in the courts against your corporations. Now go back to suckling your mommy’s tits.[/quote]

And you still live at home praying you don’t get busted for stealing music or caught by your parents beating off.[/quote]
Oh really! Like you know…no wonder the neocon nazis came to power. Thanks a lot. Go serve your masters, minion.

Read the article. If you did your repugnant head would be able to comprehend we’re talking an individual’s rights. The fact that you get to say what you say, is because people like us fight in the courts against your corporations. Now go back to suckling your mommy’s tits.[/quote]

And you still live at home praying you don’t get busted for stealing music or caught by your parents beating off.

Read the article. If you did your repugnant head would be able to comprehend we’re talking an individual’s rights. The fact that you get to say what you say, is because people like us fight in the courts against your corporations. Now go back to suckling your mommy’s tits.

p2p is considered to be an academic perk/freedom, if you don’t cause networks headaches they don’t give you grief. It is really quite civil.

20MB pipe costs 200 bucks/month

methinks the USA is too scared to sit down and jaw jaw, is all too ready to war war