University of Wisconsin Stands Up To RIAA

said by thebulldan:

Go U-Dub! Make the RIAA do their own dirty work.

However, if the UW-Madison is given cause to believe that a student, faculty or staff network user may have infringed on copyrights, it will take action.

University network policies empower the CIO to terminate that person’s network access until the matter is resolved. The Dean of Students office (for students) or supervisors (for employees) will be notified and other disciplinary action may be taken, as appropriate.

said by manfmmd:

When you get a clue how DCHP Servers/Active Directory/Domain Controllers/proxy's/etc. work, report back.

When I log-in at my College, I am proxied and prompted to enter my username and password. All of my traffic is logged and if I am in violation of the AUP, my service will be suspended. They block a variety of services and port. I'm sure that most college's work the same way.

said by apollo80:

Pleanty of people accidently stay logged on, others give out their usernames/passwords.

Silly to give them out, accidental to be left on, in either case, all that is proven that a certain username/password was used. Of course, the person with the username will be questioned, but there is still no concrete proof that X user did the deed.

said by Lord Wanker:

I am sure giving out your account info and/or not logging out are violations of the AUP....

said by manfmmd:

When I log-in at my College, I am proxied and prompted to enter my username and password. All of my traffic is logged and if I am in violation of the AUP, my service will be suspended. They block a variety of services and ports. I'm sure that most college's work the same way.

said by karlmarx:

Until the RIAA presents PROOF that THAT STUDENT, downloaded THAT SONG, it's nothing but hearsay.

said by guitarzan:

Concerning so called infringement of copyright. Is the problem uploading or sharing content or strictly downloading said content?

As an example the DiaRIAA, does not own this song. They can't do diddly squat about it being shared.

Well......

I suspect that you, somewhere in your computer, material that I have copyrighted.

And if you don't, I'll have my lawyers write law that I'll pay your local legislators to pass, to see that you do.

Now that I've said that, I expect BBR to provide me with your IP addy and your ISP to provide me with your home addy.

THEN I expect you to pay me a sum of money that I will determine.

In the interest of consistency, just send me your home address now and I'll let you know how much to pay me.

Or do you only support this line with large corporate interests?

NV

said by manfmmd:

Start>run>cmd

nslookup xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Send email

Damn, that too a whole lot of effort.

Even if they have to go into their logs if they are using non-sticky DHCP, the time that they spend will be nothing compared to what they will pay if they are complacent in stopping P2P and found to be liable in civil court.

said by ender7074:

Trust me, they flood ISPs with those "requests". I used to see them as they came into the company I used to work for as well as personally knowing one of the people that had to deal with them. They send an IP addy and say to send this letter to the person who has this IP. They expect the ISPs to then take their employees away from serving customers to do research on this item. Its so bad that some people spend all day working on these stupid requests instead of doing their normal job. The RIAA does ZERO legwork in finding these people and there's no way in knowing for sure it went to the right person. They use the threat of lawsuit to force others into doing their work for them. Once more people start standing up to them and telling them to shove it, these types of letters and requests will go away. They will have to actually start using real legal tactics to go after the people doing the illegal trading and that costs money. I doubt they will do that.

said by manfmmd:

Bottom line is, they need to budget for it like everything else.

said by ender7074:

Ahh, so its ok for someone to flood an ISP with unfounded abuse complaints? You dont mind having to hire on more people, thus raising bills, to cover those BS complaints? Why should an ISP have to budget for abuse? It's not the ISP's problem or fault if someone is infrenging on some other company's patent or copywright. You dont hold the city responsible for a bank robber driving on the streets that it maintains. If the RIAA has a problem, follow proper legal procedure and prove your case. You cant quite seem to grasp that concept.

said by Jason Levine:

If I open an abuse case with an ISP with a screenshot and IP Address as my only proof, I'd probably be laughed off the line. (Or, more likely told "We'll look into it" before having my request sent to the trash bin.)

If I open a hundred such requests with an ISP then all of their support staff would likely be told to ignore my calls.

The RIAA isn't opening an abuse case with an ISP and providing detailed evidence. They're trying to open a hundred cases with as little evidence as possible. Then they want the ISP to do all of the legwork figuring out what happened and doling out punishment while the RIAA moves on to sending the next abuse notices.

said by Jason Levine:

If I open an abuse case with an ISP with a screenshot and IP Address as my only proof, I'd probably be laughed off the line. (Or, more likely told "We'll look into it" before having my request sent to the trash bin.)

If I open a hundred such requests with an ISP then all of their support staff would likely be told to ignore my calls.

The RIAA isn't opening an abuse case with an ISP and providing detailed evidence. They're trying to open a hundred cases with as little evidence as possible. Then they want the ISP to do all of the legwork figuring out what happened and doling out punishment while the RIAA moves on to sending the next abuse notices.

said by manfmmd:

How much more evidence should they provide? In recent letters I have seen then provide IP's, file names, dates, times, P2P network/application.. Do they need to provide a DNA sample?

said by rolande:

I think you are forgetting that the majority of educational/college IT departments are woefully understaffed and underpaid.

As far as the nslookup xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx comment, if everyone has a static IP no matter where they go and there is reverse DNS configured for all those IPs than maybe that would hold water. But, that is usually not the case. Even sticky DHCP is usually not possible based on the number of unique machines (laptops) logging on and off across a variety of different internal interconnected networks. If they allowed sticky DHCP with permanent leases, they would eventually run out of IPs to hand out. Usually each segment is architected to support X number of computers at a time. Based on volume of DHCP leases handed out, an admin can determine the best average lease time to conserve address space yet still have enough available leases for the next machine to log into the network.

Even if they did have reverse DNS configured for the internal address space (odds are it is not) it would be a generic hostname.

said by RideRed:

It doesn't matter if it's a single request. Process servers get paid to do that leg work and UoW shouldn't be expected to do it for free (which equals taxpayer expense if the school is a 'state' school).

said by manfmmd:

It's a notice, they aren't being "served".

said by Kearnstd:

nope why should i have to pay? as an ISP id be tempted to tell the RIAA come with a sopena or give me 50 dollars per request.

said by ender7074:

You pay for it every time you pay your bill. You think that the time it takes to research and send the letters is free? It costs the company to pay those people to do the work. You may not see it as a line item on your bill but you can be guarenteed that your paying for it.

said by Desdinova:

"How many websites have been forced to take down content due to a "letter from an attorney" stating that the content that they are using is not allowed and to cease and desist?"

Quite a few. The difference is that RIAA isn't an attorney and the letter they're asking the school to distribute has no legal weight. I'm sure that if RIAA followed due process and got a subpoena for John Doe at the U of W then the school WOULD comply. But that's not what's happening.

said by bludude :

No as a Viacom employee... they are sueing....

said by manfmmd:

Why shouldn't University forward the letter on? They are not releasing the name of the potential infringer to the **AA, so there is no subpoena needed.

How many websites have been forced to take down content due to a "letter from an attorney" stating that the content that they are using is not allowed and to cease and desist? That it's "copyrighted" or "not authorized".

Is Viacom submitting a subpoena to Google to have YouTube videos taken down that violate their copyright?? I think not. They are simply sending them a request to remove the infringing material.

said by bill61982:

The pendulum has swung both ways. The music industry should learn the rules of an open and free market where the consumner decides. Once they do, they will make a fair amount of money and consumers for the most part will buy what they want.

said by upidstay :

O.K. you got us, Unsuprised, I mean TCH, a.k.a Tkjunkmail
a.k.a Retire Rich, a.k.a houselog44 (and maybe even a few others).

SARCASM: Yep, it is sure a sad day in America when those
said liberal universites stand up for their students instead
of the whims of the megacorps! That little thingy called
due process and innocent until proven guilty only applies
to whoever only Bill O'Reilly, Cal Thomas, and Rush Limbaugh decide that it should, not some old outdated document called the Constitution.

Any good university would not let an organization trample
on its student body (that pays the salary of thier proffessors by the way) without good reason to.

said by Transmaster:

Remember the story line a few days ago about NPR filing a protest against the exorbitant rates for streaming radio the RIAA suceeded in getting established. Most of these NPR stations are based out of Universities. If the RIAA is trying to screw over these University stations for their on line content why should the RIAA expect any help from them in curbing students from bootlegging. If I was in their shoes I would tell them where to stick their letters.