"The letters, received mid-April, do not signal a new wave of lawsuits, but contained internet protocol addresses of 21 network users suspected of illegal file sharing, and requested that users cease such activity.

While the College typically receives approximately 25 so-called takedown notices each month containing the IP addresses of suspected file sharers, the two latest letters differ in several key ways, most importantly that they were sent directly to Wright, rather than the usual recipient, Ellen Young, the College's Digital Millennium Copyright holder.

RIAA President Cary Sherman and MPAA President Dan Glickman additionally both personally expressed concerns about file sharing over the College network to Wright in their respective letters. The RIAA letter contained a list of 19 IP addresses that had engaged in file sharing, while the MPAA letter contained two IP addresses.

Similar letters were sent to other college and university presidents around the country, though MPAA spokeswoman Anne Caliguiri did not know exactly how many were sent out.

"It is part of a crackdown," Caliguiri said. "Recently, college campuses have seen an increase in file swapping due to the availability of special advanced file sharing networks like i2hub. People who steal movies on the Internet believe they're anonymous, but they're wrong."

College General Counsel Bob Donin said that the College responded to the letters as it does to any takedown notice, by informing the users at the specified IP addresses of the notice and telling them to cease file sharing activities.

Despite the differences between the most recent letters and earlier ones, Donin said he did not believe that the notices foreshadowed legal action against the College, though students who use file sharing programs do put themselves at risk.

"I don't think that it signals an intention to file lawsuits against colleges. [The RIAA and MPAA] are already filing a large number of lawsuits against individual students and other users of college networks," Donin said. "Students and others need to understand the serous consequences of file sharing."

In light of the recent notices, the College is considering implementing new methods to decrease file sharing, Donin said, though he declined to discuss any specifics.

"We always take action when we're notified of copyright infringement involving our network as long as we can identify the user," Donin said. "We are also looking at additional technological, educational and disciplinary measures that might be taken to deal with infringing activity, but no decisions have been made about that yet."

http://www.thedartmouth.com/article.php?aid=2005051601040

OK..here's my problems with this...
Number one...
"In light of the recent notices, the College is considering implementing new methods to decrease file sharing, Donin said, though he declined to discuss any specifics."

There's NOTHING WRONG WITH SHARING FILES PER SE!

Number two
""We always take action when we're notified of copyright infringement involving our network as long as we can identify the user," Donin said"

At the point they are contacted, it is only ALLEGED filesharing. Nothing is proven by the RIAA, i.e. they have not definitively proved a DMCA violation has occurred, nor have they (the RIAA) proven they are in fact, the clear copyright owner, nor that the parties they represent can prove they are the legal copyright owner.

The university I study at is a demonstration of the conclusion of the 'arms-race' approach to network management.

The university has two computer-halls at the campus, each packed tightly with computers. Not enough - but with nowhere to add more, the Systems people who manage these computers couldn't increase capacity. So they tried to decide what was using most computing time, and concluded must demand was placed by students chatting on MSN or IRC. Or, in my case, mucks.

Simple response: The university blocked the MSN client and all outgoing connections above port 1024. This not only blocks IRC, but all other chat services.

The students soon dealt with this: They found msn2go, a java-based MSN client which worked. Some of the better students discovered a workaround for IRC too: connect to the university unix server, log in with /raw and /raw again to telnet out. The improvised IRC proxy.

Systems was not pleased. They responded with the computing abmomination, Terminator. This kernel-level thread inspects all network traffic and harddrive access for forbidden content such as the msn2go website or mirc.exe. And kills the offending process immediately, and without warning. If you open an explorer window with the mirc.exe file in it, the attempt to read the file to get its icon results in explorer being killed.

It took a while for students to realise what happened, since noone thought to tell us and a terminator-killed process looks a lot like a crash. Even the lecturers had trouble with the system. And of course Terminator slows the systems down to the point of unuseability. It takes five minutes to load Acrobat reader.

The lecturers complained. The students complained, with some difficulty as the only procedure to do so is via forms that are probably not read and certinly not taken notice of. Systems insisted these are nessicary security measures to prevent misuse of university computing facilities.

Most students gave up here, but those on the computer courses found two more ways around the problem: Some passed round a html file (produced by me) which contains one tag: an applet calling th msn2go client. Others, like me, set up home SSH servers to connect to.

My only real problem now is that I want to chat, and the Systems policy on privacy is "If you want it, you clearly are up to something we should know about." The students are packed in like sardines, always peering at others monitors, and I often talk about things I would rather they didn't see.

In time, Systems will probably do worse. They have been having serious trouble with spyware recently, and dealt with this by extending Terminator to block downloads of all EXE files. I anticipate they will one day decide the USB storage devices used by the 80% of students who dont trust Systems with their data or want to work off-site are a security threat introducing untrusted code into their network.

I eagerly anticipate the day they try to disable USB storage. Either some of the Systems people will be fired, or the students will bring in their own laptops. The lecturers already do so - they cant stand to use the slow Systems-administered machines, and more than one lecture has been cancled because the piece of prehistory they insist on having connected to the projector doesn't work right.

goldenpi...great post (as usual).

Interestingly, in the 60s, the orthodox establishment was referred to as "The Man" or "The Establishment"...perhaps, in these dark days of the 21st century, the combined political / big business forces, may deserve their OWN one word designation or two words...I nominate we call it "The System" or just "Systems"

goldenpi, you rmissing one major point here. The Computer lab, as well as teh computers in it, are owned by the university. They have every right to block any service they want on their computers. You may not like it, but it's life. Chances are in the business world, you'll also run into similar policies. Deal with it.

Lothar, Dmusic owns these forums and have the "right" to monitor/delete anything and everything we say or do here as well. (But leflaw would be cutting his own throat were he to do so.)

Also, universities are often owned by the public/community/state and are NOT private entities unto themselves with the ability to dictate the rules to its' constituent students/faculty as would a corporation to it's employees. The will of the people ultimately must prevail.

"They have every right to block any service they want on their computers."

...only works as a truism if the people agree. Sound's to me like they don't.

yes, "dictate" is a key word to consider here

Just having to "deal with it" sounds like a requirement to accept what is doled out by that state institution...

...just my 2 cents

goldenpi, since most student are poor, they don't have their own laptop to use, so they're dependent on those machines. If things get bad enough, or slow enough, students might put buying a PC as there highest priority. After that, the systems' controlled PCs would not be as appealing. With subsequent low demand, systems couldn't justify the expense for doing what they're doing now, nor the headcount.

You know, having been to college, I can attest that in order to get music you don't have to go online. Just walk around your dorm asking your fellow students for recomendations and you'll stagger back to your room under the mighty weight of many borrowed cds or with quite a few burned disk in hand. Things cannot have changed so much. Mind you it will be mostly RIAA related, but it's a great way to find indies too. Works especially well in the honors dorm I've found. The "sneakernet" is untraceable. Sometimes the old way of doing things still works best.

they have a much heavier budget here at emory, but so also do the students.

Most students get around the rediculous firewall (which blocks everything BUT aim and port 80) by simply trading data on physical data disks with people who own off campus apartments, purchasing an off campus apartment, or getting friends in other local universities to handle the p2p portion of the connection then zip it along the I2 to them through a so called "permitted" network protocol.

The university noticed people ditching their housing agreements and paying the local apartment complexes what would have gone to their coffers, so now theyre REQUIRING incomming students spend at least 2 years living on campus as a requisite for continued studies.

Of course you can be expelled for hacking your way through their firewall, etc. etc.

I would not pay to go there if i had a choice, and I will definitely refuse their requests for alum donations until i see proper liberties given to their on campus residents.

"The "sneakernet" is untraceable."

Sneakernet! That's great. : )