New Uni of Florida anti-p2p app
p2pnet.net news:- The University of Florida is at it again, doing the entertainment cartel’s work for it.
In 2003, it created ICARUS (Integrated Control Application for Restricting User Services), using it shut down network access over suspected p2p activity.
The trouble was, ICARUS couldn’t tell The Good or The Bad from The Ugly.
“Not only does this program attempt to block p2p applications it has also messed up the campus network,” said U of F student at the time. “You can’t go a day without someone in a dorm saying that their internet connection has stopped working …” and “… I remember when they first implemented ICARUS at the beginning of the school year half the students in the dorms were unable to connect to internet. This can be really frustrating when you are taking a timed on-line quiz or trying to accomplish other schoolwork.”
ICARUS was commercialised by a company called Red Lambda which deployed it as cGRID.
Now the U of F is apparently running a network spy program designed for use against students on behalf of the corporate movie and music industries
“The music industry’s next weapon against online piracy is being tested at the University of Central Florida – a new front in the battle to stop college students from stealing music and movies,” says BG News.
“School officials have confirmed that the campus is experimenting with a new watchdog program designed to prevent students from using computers to swap copyright-protected files.”
The so-called Integrity application tracks data transfers between computers, “searching for code patterns that indicate users are illegally transferring material,” says the story, and, “Once located, the program automatically tells students they’ve been caught. Depending on the school, this can lead to a range of punishments, such as a temporary ban from the system.”
Encore Red Lambda, whose company slogan is, scarily, “One network, one mind”. It describes itself as is a “leader in the development of collaborative grid technology – a fusion of traditional grid computing and P2P”.
Of Integrity, “It’s like having a police car at every intersection,” BG News has company ceo Gregory Marchwinski stating.
Even so, Marchwinski says sadly, Integrity is, “not a silver bullet that can stop an underground practice that has gotten more pervasive since students first traded files on Napster in the early 2000s.”
Despite the likes of Integrity, “online pirates always seem to stay one step ahead in the online cat-and-mouse game,” says the story.
Also See:
iBG News – New program prevents illegal file sharing, April 19, 2006
If your Net access is blocked by governBryan Adams slams Net radio hikement restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the endSurvey: How Did Copyright Infringement Become Equated with Robbery? (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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April 20th, 2007 at 8:33 am
Would someone care to explain how this is even legal?
April 20th, 2007 at 9:00 am
its for the good of the MAFIAA!
Who cares about tiny details like “is this even legal?”!
Remember NSAT&T, so why do you even dare to ask if it is just in such a tiny closed environment like a campus wide LAN.
I’m sure the university guys have some nice papers the students sign automaticly at the beginning of a schoolyear where those concerns like privacy and anonymous non-monitored comunication by the students is waived.
April 20th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Ever heard of an intrusion detection system? Analyzing packet content has been a widely accepted practice in the security field for about 15 years.
April 20th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
‘The so-called Integrity application tracks data transfers between computers, “searching for code patterns that indicate users are illegally transferring material,” ‘
- so does this mean they ‘fingerprinting’ or just searching for patterns, ie a user recieving lots of packets from differnet users?
If it’s fingerprinting then wouldn’t using encryption ‘fix’ this?
If its the other than that also could be a user recieving legitamite files over p2p, or using a some form of web bot used to retrieve information (rss feeds for example) from many sources.
“Once located, the program automatically tells students they’ve been caught. Depending on the school, this can lead to a range of punishments, such as a temporary ban from the system.”
- Just what we need robot police supplied by the *AA’s.
-Gues it can’t be the second or their would be too many false positives and the university could have quite a few legal battles on it’as hands.
April 20th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
“- Just what we need robot police supplied by the *AA’s. ”
police, judge and jury as a matter of fact…. guilty until proven otherwise. And the *AA’s won’t let that happen, they will bury you in court
Summary of SOP seems to be:
Pay us cause it’ll cost you way more to fight.
Since you didnt pay us we’ll keep this in court until you run out of cash. Then when you cannot afford a lawyer. Then we will win by default.
And on the off chance they cannot outlast someone or some one comes up with something that shows they were not ‘guilty’ they drop the case and fight having to pay for the others legal cost.
The ‘ well if you didn’t look like you fall into the demographic that would just roll over and pay us we’d never have sued you, so it’s your fault anyway’ part of the case.
April 20th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
These offenders should be named and shamed in a list of the worst universities. It should be made publicly available to all students and highly visible.
Once students start ignoring universities that flagrantly disregard their privacy rights and/or work with the RIAA/MPAA, they will soon come around.
It is time to institute boycotts against them…
April 21st, 2007 at 12:19 am
Put news like this in kids’ P2P applications so the app shows a popup. That way they CAN’T miss it and know what universities to avoid.