Comments on: Tackling College Piracy: MPAA and RIAA’s Favorite

By: Brice Bible Will Be My Bitch!

Brice Bible Will Be My Bitch! — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 03:54:13 +0000

“This way if we get a RIAA or MPAA discovery letter we can turn over the user….”

Sounds a bit more than just “are monitoring a network they own. Completely within their rights.”

I call bullshit. Since when is it a university’s policy to let a private corporate lobby group dictate policy and invade the privacy of students? The universities to support are the ones that have had the backbone to tell the RIAA/MPAA to stick it and defend the privacy rights of their students. Obviously OU has forgotten who they work for; the people who pay the tuition that pays their salaries and paid for their damn network in the first place.

And to UniversitySysAdmin, I would suggest you choose wisely before joining an enemy that is slowly but surely being defeated both in the public eye and, more importantly, in the courts. Don’t be so high and mighty either regarding the monitoring capability of your network. I guarantee you that if I was on your network, my data streams would NOT be available to your prying little eyes. The only thing you’d be pulling is your pud.

What you should be pulling is your head out of your ass and start doing your job, not what some corporate goon tells you is your job.

By: web design

web design — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 02:07:20 +0000

Seems fine to me, they are monitoring a network they own. Completely within their rights. If you’re transmitting your password in plain text, you need to stop using FTP.

By: UniversitySysAdmin

UniversitySysAdmin — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:41:28 +0000

As a University SysAdmin we are under pressure to have data on all users all the time. It’s also our responsibility to enforce the Univ. policies. We don’t block P2P, torrent or otherwise, but we do monitor all traffic (all the way to layer 7) and can pull your data streams for any given period of time and can tell you the name of files you’ve downloaded and all other traffic coming out of your box. (See: http://www.consentry.com/products_lss.html) This way if we get a RIAA or MPAA discovery letter we can turn over the user and meet our policy-based obligations. So, the onus is on the user to self-police and we don’t look like big brother by blocking all P2P apps.
Either way, there is “fair-use” involved in the usage of copyrighted material on a college campus. As long as faculty and students use the material in an academic fashion and not just “steal” it then they have a strong defense against the RIAA or MPAA. This is why they haven’t been overly aggressive with suing students at Universities nationwide and have selectively gone after obvious offenders downloading any and everything they can get their hands on.
In the end I think the RIAA and their minions will fade into oblivion but until that time beware of their deep pockets and false sense of victimization.

By: Meocross

Meocross — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 07:35:23 +0000

Hopeless, when the hell will they learn!? some one needs to exterminate the MAFIAA out of existence they are a freaking nuisance really

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 04:57:21 +0000

Wow, yet another censored post courtesy of TorrentFreak. I didn’t even swear in this one, wonder what set off their EXTREMELY STRICT FILTER this time? Feels like I’m five years old trying to get a post in at this site.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 04:55:32 +0000

Haha, wow @48. Sounds like most colleges though – completely disconnected from the student body and obsessed with their own little world of petty power and money-spending (all at the cost of fleecing the students of course). Can’t forget sports either, a very nice side business for many schools. Oh America: where education and your health are big business (a leading cause of debt and *the* leading cause of bankruptcy, respectively).

By: Diji1

Diji1 — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 04:39:28 +0000

@40

“Copyright nonsense is seriously hampering our culture. It is being used to seize control over other people.”

Dude, get a f**king grip! People have a choice over whether they buy or steal stuff you idiot. Explain exactly how copyright controls people please. Exactly how is it hampering culture – are you actually naive enough to think that people will make stuff costing 100′s of millions of dollars – and NOT get rewarded for it. FFS!

AFAIC, it’s OU network, so they have the right to try to control what goes on, like any other entity. For people considering this institution this is an issue. There’ll always be a way around it.

As always I try not to delude myself: I’m a thief, it’s up to them to try to stop me and me to keep stealing whilst I can.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:48:20 +0000

@50

They do when they come from Adzilla, Front Porch, Kindsight, NebuAd or Phorm.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:11:04 +0000

@53
But that’s not the entire problem. There is also a symbolic problem. The symbolic importance is that the College wants to stigmatize file-sharing, saying that it is “unacceptable.” This is a very big problem, and must be changed.

By: Viper007Bond

Viper007Bond — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:04:34 +0000

Everyone there should just tick “force encrypted connections”. Problem solved.