Illegal downloads fine begins August 1

[DaBees-Knees]

http://www.lsureveille.com/news/illegal-downloads-fine-begins-august-1-1.1772282

College students may think the $50 fine they’ll soon face for illegally downloading music is a lot of money, but the alternative could be much worse.

Beginning Aug. 1, the University will fine students $50 for illegally sharing and downloading files on the LSU network in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The Recording Industry Association of America has the legal authority to take offenders to court where they could face up a minimum of $750 per song for civil penalties, according to its Web site. Criminal penalties can run as high as $250,000 and five years in prison.

Sheri Thompson, IT planning and communications officer, said she understands a typical RIAA subpoena to be $4,000.

She said the University wanted to fine students an amount that was enough to deter them from illegally sharing files but wouldn’t be an overwhelming burden.

“$50 isn’t $4,000 and isn’t debilitating and going to be the difference between them being able to live their life fully,” Thompson said.

Thompson said the fine became necessary when the number of violations increased despite the University telling students “this is not the way to go.”

“This is costing us money whenever a violation occurs,” she said. “It was really becoming a burden.”

Thompson said there was a decrease in the number of violations on campus a couple of years ago before rising back to about 200 last year.

“It had gotten down to probably about 100, but it was still too many,” Thompson said.
Thompson said the RIAA monitors ports to see if they have left any music files that belong
to the RIAA open to the public.

“When you transfer files, they’re called packets, and these packets can be identified as to what they are,” Thompson said. “Usually it’s through things like BitTorrent, or through
LimeWire, or any other things that are shareware, where people put up stuff illegally or make it available illegally.”

Thompson said many universities have been working in cooperation with the RIAA for several years.

“[The RIAA has] a list every year that comes out of the top offenders,” Thompson said. “Fortunately we have not been on that list, and we don’t want to be on that list. But there are places that have actually shut off the ability to do any sharing of files because they were getting so many complaints from the RIAA.”

Thompson said students aren’t the only ones illegally downloading music on the LSU network.

“Faculty and staff are doing it,” she said. “You just don’t get those notifications very often.”

Thompson said a first offense warrants a fine and the shutdown of a student’s port, while a second offense sends a student to the Dean of Students’ office.

“With multiple offenses, you do face expulsion,” Thompson said.

The RIAA can also pursue legal action if it decides a student’s actions are severe.

Thompson said she is not aware of the RIAA suing any University students in the past for an offense.

She said the University would have to send the student a letter if the RIAA wishes to subpoena them.

“We don’t tell the RIAA who you are. They have to get a subpoena for that,” Thompson said. “Once they get a subpoena, they say ‘OK, person X, you’ve done this, now that’s $4,000 for our time.’ And you have 28 days or something ridiculous to pay it. If you don’t pay it, the fine goes up from there.”

An interesting case. Although there's a lot of talk about the RIAA, I can't see where the univerisity has had to pay out a cent. There's no talk of any money collected being paid to musicians or under which, if any, law they are acting. I'm not up on American law, but this seems illegal, and acting under false pretences, from which ever angle you look at it.

[Forested665]

200x50 = 10k
if the riaa threatens to supena the top 2 offenders then the university pays out for them and earns 2k while deffering the students from continuing their actions and keeping them out of the radar.

[DaBees-Knees]

Forrested, So if my understanding is correct, the RIAA just has to accuse and the university pays up? That must be a nice little earner for the RIAA.

[GhostShip]

I find it strange that folks are not aware of the law on this matter, so let me clear it up, DOWNLOADING IS NOT ILLEGAL, uploading is the offence folks can be taken to court for, I would like to see more folks make this clear as otherwise we are doing the dirty work for the cartels by spreading misleading information.

If anyone cares to take the time to do any research you,ll find no one has ever been sued for downloading in the US or the UK as its not illegal, all the big stories refer to cases of uploading.

[Forested665]

With ghostships response i can further explain my answer top you knees.
This entire article is in relation to students uploading across the campus network.
Universities are regarded the same as coorporations and so they can be sued the same as any person walking down the street. While this article goes into supenas and stuff it rarely goes past the university level.

There was a big fuss a couple years back because some people at UT who downloaded through the library were taken to court and had to drop out of college take loans ect.
Idk how things are in the UK but anyone upcoming in the states needs a college degree to sustain what is considered a normal level of living.

[ñòóKýçrÕôK]

What I find interesting is that it's always been my understanding that you can't see what's in the data packets during file transfers so how do they "know" what's in the packets without some other means of file identification. And what does "left any music files that belong to the RIAA" mean in this case? As for the artists, if they choose to let the RIAA represent them in these types of matters then they get whatever the artist and the RIAA decide is fair. So to them it doesn't matter if the artist gets anything from money they claim from "violators". The RIAA is not actually the recording industries artists of america,. It is a group of individuals or groups of individuals representing an artist or specific groups of artists. With that I imagine is the artist are given revenue based on concerts and appearences first with record sales being a very minimal of income for an artist represented by the RIAA.

[Uuvini]

You can see whats inside packets, all you have to have is access to a node that it is being transmitted through. Every packet you send has a marker on it saying what file it is a part of, and where in the file it goes. Now yes you can encript them to a certain degree, but it is easy enough to break that encription as long as you intercept enough packets. You're ISP's do this, most workplaces do this, most universities do this, any internet cafe can do this, in fact, any kid with a laptop and a wireless card can do this to any wireless connection.

[ñòóKýçrÕôK]

yes but is that legal?

[White Stripes]

when has doing something illegal stopped the content industry?

[GhostShip]

The technique is called "deep packet inspection" Nooks, as for anyone being able to see what your doing on MX they only have one method of doing so and its due to the way Mx is designed, all file transfers are in plaintext and this is the only aspect of MX that's weak in security terms.

The transfer system WinMX uses is based around the system open nap used and its possible for throttling ISPs to pick out the initial file request packet and slow down your download, thankfully everything else is encrypted so this weakness will only be able to be leveraged by your ISP, its a shame this weakness exists but I,m pretty sure its because its because the WinMX developer wished to ensure compatibility was kept for the open nap side of the client and the ease with which multiple source downloads can be achieved keeping things this simple.

Btw Uuvini WinMX uses a mutating key method (chaining) and thus gathering packets of any number is kind of redundant because its unlikey the plaintext or the key seen will be seen again in the same way and no ISP will waste the amount of processing time required to brute force every posssible key in real time which would need to be done for every packet.

[Trestor]

Does this DMCA give the university the legislated authority to impose fines for uploading files through it's computer system? Because if it doesn't I don't see where their authority comes from.

[Forested665]

They own the network. Its the same as a prof imposing a 5 dollar fine if you leave trash in his lecture hall.

[GhostShip]

I suspect that the university will be doing nothing except pass on take-down notifications and be passing them off as legitimate reasons to extract revenue from the students.
Take-down notifications are sent out automatically by companies in the us of the BayTSP style, this is just a shake down of students by the unscrupulous in my view and I see no reason for anyone to think otherwise.