The University of Florida was tired of having to hassle with the copyright infringement issue. As a result, this past summer, they debuted a new solution called ICARUS (Integrated Computer Application for Recognizing User Services) on the network that links all the residence halls on the UF campus.

In an article at Wired.com
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,60613,00.html , we read a little more about the way in which this system works.

"The open-source program was developed by campus programmers to cut off the file sharing going on among students. Housing officials say the application educates students as it restricts them from peer-to-peer services.

Last spring, the university received about 40 notices of copyright violations per month. At peak file-trading periods, 90 percent of the traffic on the housing network was peer-to-peer. In an average 24-hour period, 3,500 of the 7,500 students in the residence halls would use P2P services like Kazaa.

"We needed something to stem the flow. We were spending too much time tracking people down," said Robert Bird, supervisor of network services for the UF department of housing. "There were too many of them and too few of us."

Enter Icarus.

"Icarus has detected about 300 people using P2P this fall," Bird said. "That's an over 90 percent drop in people using P2P. That's a dramatic reduction in user behavior."

This summer, Icarus nabbed 769 first-time offenders and 90 second-time violators; only four tested the system for a third time.

"When we turned the program on, our bandwidth usage dropped by 85 percent," said Norbert Dunkel, director of housing and residence education for the university.

"People simply stopped trying," Bird said.

When students first register on the network, they are required to read about peer-to-peer networks and certify that they will not share copyright files. Icarus then scans their computer, detects any worms, viruses or programs that act as a server, such as Kazaa. Students are then given instructions on how to disable offending programs.

If a student is on the network and tries to share files, Icarus automatically sends an e-mail and an immediate pop-up warning and disconnects the student from the network. The first violation disables network access for 30 minutes; the second cuts off access for five days. Third-time offenders are subject to the school's judicial process, and their network access is cut off indefinitely.

Bird said the immediacy of the violation detection and user notification has been an effective deterrent. Some of the students may not intend to share files, anyway, so "we're preventing them from taking an unintended step into legal waters," he said.

Florida's project is the first case study presented to a committee of university officials and entertainment executives investigating fixes for illegal file sharing at colleges. The committee seeks standout examples of technologies that will curb illegal file sharing. Second, the group wants legitimate digital music and movie services designed for universities. Icarus addresses the first issue and could serve as a model to other schools."

Well, apparently is may be serving as a model for other schools, because now, the University of Arizona is looking closer at this system.

In an article on the Arizona Daily Star, by Inger Sandal, we find the statement :

"Students downloading music and movies account for 80 percent of UA computer network traffic at night."

Understandably, the school is concerned that much of this activity, may bring the threat of litigation to their school from the RIAA.

In fact, from the article, we read :
"The exact cost of such swapping is hard to calculate, but the demand has forced UA to double the capacity of its system in the past two years, and to take steps to curb such congestion during the day. The university has also received about 540 complaints from the recording industry alleging copyright violations, with more than half coming in just the last year.

The problem is so widespread on college campuses worldwide that the UA and more than 100 other universities have contacted the University of Florida in recent weeks about a new system that monitors the computing network and detects when students in the residence halls are sharing a large number of files.

"I've heard estimates that as much as 80 percent of all file sharing is done by university dormitory residents, mainly because they've got such incredibly high-speed connections relative to even a typical broadband user," said Robert Bird, who coordinates network services in the University of Florida's housing department. He developed the monitoring software, called Icarus, with systems programmer Will Saxon because administrators knew there was a severe problem on campus with peer-to-peer file sharing.

Icarus, which stands for Integrated Control Application for Restricting User Services, is a complete management tool and is still evolving. It allows legitimate commercial uses such as downloading songs from Web sites like iTunes that charge a nominal fee per song. "

And, as we read the piece we find :
"Icarus, which debuted in June, has clipped the wings of about 1,800 Gators who have tried to download so far this fall.

The system works like this: First-time offenders get a pop-up message explaining why they were knocked off the Internet until they watch a presentation. They must also remove the file-sharing software from their computer.

As of Thursday, 160 second-time violators had received a five-day suspension of Internet services. "We haven't had any third-time offenders," said Bird, who added that such violators would face indefinite Internet suspension and a campus hearing.

Downloading music is part of campus culture, said UA psychology senior Sarah Thomas, 21, who doesn't own a single CD bought from a store. Napster, which offered free music from a massive database, was still a novelty when she moved into a residence hall four years ago as a freshman.

"We all went ape wild with Napster," she said, recalling the thrill of using her personal computer in the dorm. A song that would take 25 minutes to download on the dial-up system at her parents' home, would take maybe 25 seconds at the UA.

With about 30,000 computers hooked up to its network, including personal computers and laptops, the UA has the largest non-Defense Department system in Southern Arizona. Many computers are in public-access areas such as libraries, where it is possible to download music but more complicated. A student who says he was trying to download music recently crashed the computers in the Information Commons for about 20 minutes. Police continue to investigate.

UA is interested in evaluating Icarus, which won't be available at least until next spring. "We can't continue to blindly throw money into network connections for people to use those network connections for what could be copyright violations," said Edward Frohling, UA's principal network systems analyst.

UA officials manage their vast network during the peak daytime hours with traffic shaping equipment that can see the type of traffic that looks like music sharing, without delving into the content. The UA significantly reduces the bandwidth during the workday, which slows the system and discourages downloading.

There are legitimate uses for peer-to-peer file sharing. The library is starting to work on a way to share library materials using such networks, Frohling said.

Arizona State University uses similar measures. "We're all doing what we can to control or manage the downloading of files, especially the peer-to-peer traffic," said William Lewis, ASU's information technology vice provost. "

One can only wonder that, as the University of Florida continues to use ICARUS, and perhaps, the University of Arizona may implement it, that ICARUS
may become a nationwide reaction to the filesharing issue on campuses in this country.

For the full article, please see :
http://www.dailystar.com/star/fri/31121UAMUSICDOWNLOAD.html

~Code

The title reminds me of The Melting Point of Wax by Thrice.

I mentioned the phrase in the last ICARUS article.

If everyone who doesn't like this knew something about how stuff like that worked, and pooled their resources, then I believe that it would only be a matter of time.

If a student is on the network and tries to share files, Icarus automatically sends an e-mail and an immediate pop-up warning and disconnects the student from the network.

what if the student is sharing a term paper with a classmate that they are both writing, or giving someone homework assignments? sounds like overkill

sounds like the riaa is getting their way

That is fucking bullshit, invasion of privacy, just because you go to school doesn't mean they should be able to do that, they take all your money as is already.

Being that the network belongs to the school, they have the right to supervise its use. Just as a private corporation (like where I work) does. I can't even pull this site up at work anymore ( I get some kinda "Hi, I'm Fen Shuing...I'll be happy to help you shortly.") The school also has the right to protect itself from it sees as a liability (wrong as we all know that it is, that's the facts of life). So, if these kids sign onto the school's network, they know (or should know) that there's the change of their activity being monitored. Not defending what's happening, just stating fact.

Also sounds almost like a more insidious variation of Jim Crow laws -- that is, if a black person in the South of the late 19th-to-mid 20th Century were to enter a "whites only" area of any type, they were toast.

But reading all this, I see the attitude of "collective guilt" written all over this whole thing.

Sort of makes me glad I never went to college.

All this and in Arizona you can buy a gun and carry it out in the open, man file sharings going to be the new federal crime of the new century.

Headline/ File sharer soon to be sentence to death for sharing on the internet which is forbidden by law.

This your internet this is what happens when you use the internet.

It doesn't clarify what happens if the system detects kazaa running and shareing only free software. Looks like the lazy system just cuts them off anyway.

The smarter the system, the easier it is to fool. Kazaa cant be upgraded now, but already a few networks, an soon more, are using encryption. Changeing ports often fools the simpler detectors. In time, we will see p2p programs using the SSL protocol, so transfers would be indistinguishable from an encrypted file download. At that point the smart detectors are going to be useless, and someone will write a byte-counter program. That will be very hard to sneak past (split identity? Hijack a set of MAC and IP addresses from inactive systems?) and could get false positives. After a recent hard drive crash, I managed to download 200 meg in assorted drivers and patches (ok, half life patches).

Its going to be an arms race. Could get very intresting. Its going to end with the detectors takeing extreme measures. They might resort to byte counting, but as that could still allow small files (music) the RIAA could still be a problem. They might NAT the whole network, much to the irritation of IRCers and gamers. They might even panic and just set up HTTP, NNTP, FTP and mail proxies, reduceing the internet to basic services. Have to wonder how long before someone deals with that one too

I will continue to consider this.

After more research into the design of the icarus system, I realise I had overestimated it considerably. Its a server detector. Nothing more. There are users complaining its being set off when they try to run games. The false positive rate on that system is going to be rediculous. Games, IRC, IM programs, all could set it off. There are already ways round it, the old http-tunnel trick thats popular for getting through firewalls with kazaa works perfectly.

Perhaps I should investigate portless communications? Data can be encapsulated in ICMP packets easily enough. Actually, why bother with even that? Only the IP header is needed for routeing. Would reduce overhead bandwidth as well. Going to need to strange codeing in the application, but it should be possible.

Wouldn't a hardware firewall keep this thing from ever being able to detect what you are doing in the first place?

Heh, in a way. Yes, a firewall would stop any server-detector systems such as Icarus. But it also impairs p2p performance, and causes trouble with shareing which is very bad for the network. Anyway, now the arms race is underway, how long before Icarus is adjusted to fix that? A hub to tap the network cable, a sniffer program with a promiscius card, and a filter to log MACs recieveing TCP connections. Thats all it would need.

Suprised no one made a reference to Big Brother from 1984

Big Broher and the Holding Company?
Or 1984 from Van Halen?