Are you Legal?
Here's a great example of our nation's colleges selling out their students and bending over to RIAA's demands. I just had an email passed on to me that originated from Indiana University's Associate Vice President for Information & Infrastructure Assurance dealing with file sharing that is just plain sad. It shows a complete lack of caring for their students, as well as a lack of understanding about the laws involved. Oh, as well as the worst tag-lines for anti-file sharing I've ever heard!
The Letter
Dear IU Student:
All of us at Indiana University have been excited to welcome you this fall semester 2007, and we share your optimism for your success here. It is in this spirit that we are writing to alert you to a significant risk having to do with how you may use the Internet. It is VERY important that you read the contents of this letter.
Briefly, for the past year or so, music companies have been suing college students for thousands of dollars, because they claim those students have used "peer to peer" software like BitTorrent and Limewire to share songs with other people on the Internet without the permission of the people who own that music. Lawsuits were filed against 19 Indiana University students in May 2007. In October 2007 we received another round of "early settlement" letters, which typically have preceded lawsuits which may be filed if students don't settle the claims before the case goes to trial. The music companies are demanding between $3,000 and $4,000 to settle their claims; several IU students have paid $4,000 in settlement. If the lawsuits were to go to trial and the music companies are then able to prove their claims of copyright infringement, students could face substantially higher penalties under the law, not to mention significant legal fees. The settlement amounts that IU students have paid this past summer have been financially devastating for some families, requiring at least one student to withdraw from school, and others to consider filing bankruptcy.
Many do not realize that it is generally illegal to share copyrighted music, videos, games, and software files over the Internet without the permission of the people who own those works. In some cases there can be criminal penalties, even if students are not exchanging money as part of their file sharing. It is critical that you understand the following:
- if you share copyrighted music, movies and software files over the Internet using peer-to-peer file sharing programs, you are most likely breaking the law -- and, based on recent cases, that's true even if you do not know you are sharing files;
- it is relatively simple for the copyright owners or their agents to identify computers on the Internet from which sharing is taking place, and then use a subpoena to compel IU to identify the owner of that computer;
- they may then file a lawsuit against you, seeking thousands of dollars;
- illegal sharing using Internet access provided by IU also violates IU policy; and
- if IU receives a valid notice that you have used the IU network to engage in unlawful file sharing, the University will impose appropriate disciplinary sanctions and, beginning January 1, 2008, will apply an administrative charge of $50 to your bursar bill to cover the costs of processing the notice.The University has been educating students for several years about the problems of sharing copyrighted materials over the Internet without permission of the copyright holders, and the serious risks that it poses to students and their families. Our experience has been that students do not always understand the seriousness of this issue. Therefore we are writing to urge you to help minimize the risks of unlawful file sharing by educating yourself and carefully considering these very real penalties.
For more information about the legal and policy issues surrounding file sharing and how to avoid becoming a target of a lawsuit, please see our website, http://filesharing.iu.edu.
This is not the sort of letter that we enjoy sending, but we hope you will understand that it is out of concern for IU students and families that we are taking the very unusual step of writing to you. Again, we wish you all the best and sincerely welcome you as members of the Indiana University community this year.
Sincerely,
Mark S. Bruhn
Associate Vice President for Information and Infrastructure Assurance
Office of the Vice President for Information Technology and CIO
Hopefully you can see why I'm concerned, not only is IU turning students over to RIAA, but they're then charging them extra money! And all this in a year when two schools (William and Mary and University of New Mexico) have stood up to RIAA and federal judges have knocked down ex parte motions to allow for John Doe lawsuits. This means they would need to identify the guilty parties before filing suit, rather than identifying them as "John Doe" and then issuing subpoenas to the university to get their identity. This means it is possible for a school to defend their students in a court of law, if they so choose, there is precedence for it.
The Claims
Now lets look at Indiana University's policy. Rather than defend their students, from a school that defended Alfred Kinsey and all his research, IU says that RIAA will 'compel [us] to identify the owner of that computer' and 'they may then file a lawsuit against you, seeking thousands of dollars.' This is what we call FUD (Fear, uncertainty, and doubt), not a good policy. In addition, if they 'have' to give your name up, they then charge you $50! When they have students withdrawing due to the costs of the case, why do they feel the need to add insult to injury and tack on more money? I was under the impression that they had cheap representation for students, if they couldn't afford a real lawyer. If that's the case, and you're not actually going to fight the claim, why not just have their interns write the damning response, giving up a fellow student?
The Problems
We've already seen that these ex parte motions do not stand up in a court of law, so this whole business of being compelled to bend over to the subpoenas is utter nonsense. If IU bothered to fight, they would probably win. Especially since RIAA has been forced to cover lawyer fees in at least one big "win" for itself, to the tune of almost $65,000 dollars.
They say 'if you share copyrighted music, movies and software files over the Internet using peer-to-peer file sharing programs, you are most likely breaking the law' yet that doesn't matter because in this country you are innocent until proven guilty. That means that because there are circumstances (why they said most likely instead of you are) where you are not breaking the law, IU cannot simply assume you are. In the description paragraph they add to this saying students are sued because music companies 'claim those students have used "peer to peer" software'... That's all a claim. No mention of actual proof at all! And later 'If the lawsuits were to go to trial and the music companies are then able to prove their claims of copyright infringement...' shows that they've done nothing to prove it yet, but IU would rather turn their students over than try to fight on their behalf.
They say 'it is relatively simple for the copyright owners or their agents to identify computers on the Internet from which sharing is taking place, and then use a subpoena to compel IU to identify the owner of that computer' but that claim is false on one count, and legally unsound on the other. It may be 'simple' to see that a file is coming from a certain IP, but thanks to wonderful programs like TOR, simple proxies, and the fact that rootkits can do anything (including install a proxy for file sharing) with your computer there's no real knowledge that that computer was in fact the guilty one unless you check it for any of the above programs. In fact it gets more complicated because of IP and MAC address spoofing that would allow someone to masquerade as another student on the school network. That leads in to the second claim that IU can turn over the owner of that computer. Sure, some judges have actually found that even if you don't know it and accidentally share files you're guilty, but that's not who they're turning over. If you know IU's network policy, you know that you have to register your MAC address. This is how they 'know' the owner of the computer, not magic. It is trivial to spoof a MAC address to appear as another computer. So that means it is trivial to share files as another student with no repercussions upon yourself.
How can anyone with a background in computer security, as Mark Bruhn has, ignore the fact that it is so easy to spoof your identity, and believe RIAA when it says it can identify the correct IP? This is blatantly false!
The Joke
Here's where it gets surreal, their anti-file-sharing campaign. I checked out http://filesharing.iu.edu and couldn't believe my eyes! Their campaign is 'Are you legal?' which on a college campus is more likely to be taken as a pick up line than a statement about online legality. They even offer free shirts with this slogan and handcuffs on it (which I promptly ordered for my graduation party)! All jokes aside, this website is great FUD. From the fonts used (horror themed), to the news posted (all pro-RIAA news, no mention of the wins against RIAA), to the request that students turn in websites they find suspicious this site is designed to scare students into compliance.
This is just a sad day for the 38,000 students at Indiana University, to have their school sell them out so readily, and then tack more money on! Anyone who feels this is as despicable as I do should be tempted to go ahead and write Mark Bruhn or perhaps the new President, who used to be the CIO, and tell him how you feel. Maybe if the students say something, encourage their friends not to come, or stand up for their freedoms IU will stop its rampant policy changes. I'd note that this is in addition to a campus wide smoking ban that comes into effect the same day (January 1st, 2008) which prohibits anyone from smoking at any place on the entire campus. Now I don't smoke cigarettes, nor have I lived on a college campus in the past two years, but its absurd that a student would have to choose between quitting smoking and walking all the way off campus to smoke if they go to a major state school. Wouldn't it be better to set up designated smoking areas around major academic centers and residence halls? Maybe encourage people, rather than discourage them? Its time like these that make me glad to be getting out of college in a month and 8 days.
