Their code of conduct would have an entry that states “the campus network is not to be used to illegally download copyrighted works” (or something to that effect). As far as I know, that’s considered a no-no pretty much everywhere in the US. And as long as your ISP is AT&T, Cablevision, Time Warner, Verizon or Comcast (which is probably the majority of most Americans), each DMCA notice your ISP receives against your account could mean certain actions – like having to take an educational webinar, or having your connection terminated, just like what LSU is doing. So how would this signal out an LSU student over any other American?

And if you don’t like LSU’s rules, no one says that is the ONLY university you can go to. According to Wiki’s list, I count about 15 different institutions for higher education (excluding all of the various branches) in Louisiana alone, plus you have countless colleges and universities in 49 other states, and something like 170 other countries to chose from… I would imagine you could find at least one you might be able to approve of.

If piracy is included in the usage of the campus provided internet section, it would be no different than the school holding a hearing to determine if a student cheated on an exam or was drinking in his dorm room…It wasn’t (as far as I recall) specifically mentioned when I was at University, however it was stated the network would be reserved for academic use and anything that interfered with it could be punished. So surfing Facebook or whatever would be fine, but using excessive bandwidth to torrent and thus slowing down your neighbor’s ability to research could be punished…

It depends… An American student would weigh a lot more than an European…

First time you’re “caught” you get disconnected until you sign a letter stating you’re familiar with the acceptable use policy and you promise not to violate it again. If you got caught a second time, they added a $30 re-connection fee. If you get busted the third time they shut your port down for good, and you would have to use a computer in one of the labs. Or now, the wifi network, which has torrents blocked.

One of my professors mentioned he had some IT people show up to his office after he had discovered some Spotify like music service (it was before their US launch) that was using excessive amounts of bandwidth. He said they said they only showed up because it was a professor’s office – had it been a student they would have just killed the connection. Once they verified what he was using, they asked him to tweak the settings so it wouldn’t use so much bandwidth.