Bowling Green U and CopySense nonsense
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:-Have you ever heard of the DMCA Copyright Safeguard Program?
We hadn’t either.
Bowling Green State University student Greg Daigneault has, though.
When he got back to his dorm room after Fall Break, “he was unpleasantly surprised – his computer had been banned from the University’s Internet connection,” says The BG News, going on:
“Although the ban was only for 24 hours, Daigneault feels students were not properly warned, and the initial punishment may be a little steep. ‘I do think [the University's policy] is fair because downloading music is illegal,’ Daigneault said. [Well, they have say that don't they?] ‘But I think they are being kind of harsh with the punishments’.”
Bowling Green’s efforts to placate Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG and their RIAA by nailing their own students started on October 10.
And they’re using Audible Magic’s ridiculous CopySense nonsense as the hammer.
Not but also, they admit to using a “traffic shaper”.
191 computers
Under the the BGDMCACSP (Bowling Green DMCA Copyright Safeguard Program) students, “illegally sharing files using peer-to-peer programs” will have their Internet suspended 24 hours, says the story, going on a second “offense” will be a two-week block, “and a third offense will result in a loss of Internet for the remainder of the semester, said Matt Haschak, director of ITS security”.
As of October 16, “191 computers on campus were shown as violating the policy since it was instated, Haschak said,” according to the The BG News, going on
“The University last year received 658 cease and desist notices from the [Recording Industry Association of America],” Haschak said. “That was number 55 in the nation, number two in the state of Ohio. That raised our awareness of how rampant this was.”
Haschak said there’s a, ” strong correlation between the schools that receive the most cease and desist notices and the number of pre-litigation letters” sent to the University.
“They’re not asking you please stop,” Haschak said in the story. “They’re saying who is this person and we’re going to sue them.”
The pre-litigation letters start out with an initial settlement offer of $3,000, Haschak said, and, “A program called CopySense is being used by ITS to find students illegally sharing files.”
Copyright owners, “submit a digital signature of their copyrighted material, such as a song or movie, and when a file is downloaded on campus, if that file matches up with a digital signature, that file is flagged as an illegal download,” Haschak explains.
Audible SlapStick
But BGU has, sadly, already run into CopySense nonsense.
“If you are on a level one your Internet is blocked for 24 hours, but your peer-to-peer is still not blocked and that’s a problem we’ve found with the system and the vendors are working to get that resolved,” story has TS “information security analyst” Brian Grime stating.
“However, in the meantime what is happening after they are getting the level one and their Internet is blocked, their peer-to-peer is still active,” he says, “So, in that 24 hours they can get bumped to a level two.”
Not to worry, though. Audible SlapStick is on the job.
“If it is determined to be copyrighted then [CopySense] will bring it up for us,” Haschak says. “If the person is doing it and it is not considered illegal or copyrighted then we won’t see it. We don’t see every download going on, just the ones that resonate as a copyrighted material.”
Phew! That’s reassuring!
The story says, “Jordan Jones, computer consultant for RCC, said RCC deals with many of the student complaints and initially students were upset about the policy, but many now understand why these measures were taken. [It doesn't say what RCC stand for.]
“It seemed like lots were upset and yelling obscenities at first, but now a lot have realized what they were doing was illegal and have removed the programs,” Jones said.
Meanwhile, “A package shaper prioritizes sites by their purpose and allocates bandwidth to those sites accordingly, Jones says in the story, adding:
“Meaning that educational Web sites get first priority followed by other Web sites, chatting and gaming applications, and lastly peer-to-peer programs.
“”Haschak said the University put a package shaper in place several years ago because peer-to-peer programs were taking up too much bandwidth.”
$3,990 to $200,000
So what does it cost to become a happy university user of CopySense gobbledygook softeware?
“The CopySense Network Appliance is available in three models, for managing 2MB, 50MB, and 150MB networks,” said the company five years ago.
“CSA-002 is priced at $3,990, CSA-050 is priced at $11,990, and CSA-150 is priced at $19,990. One year of regular content updates, similar to virus signature updates, is included with the initial purchase. Subsequent one-year subscriptions to content updates are available for all three models, priced at $200, $600, and $1,000 respectively.”
For more information, contact Audible Magic at 408 399-6405, or www.audiblemagic.com.
In 2007, “The list price for the CopySense product at ASU’s [Arizona State University] scale is just over $200,000, but ASU expects its costs this year, as a Pioneer Reference Account, to be closer to 1/2 that price,” it told the US House Committee on Science and Technology.
Serious embarrassment
Dr Doug Jacobson’s company $16,000 a year in “maintenance” and Lo! – “suddenly RIAA letters stop!” – Recording Industry vs The People once pointed out
Jacobson was hired by the RIAA to provide expert testimony in a case in which the Big 4 tried to paint Marie Lindor, a 57-year-old New York woman who knows as much about computers as she does about flying a 747, as a massive online distributor of copyrighted music, said a p2pnet post, going on »»»
However, instead of shoring up the RIAA’s fictional claims, Jacobson (right) has become a(nother) serious embarrassment.
Says The Post:
Today, the university uses a nearly $60,000 software and hardware package from Audible Magic to stop file sharing on its network and pays about $16,000 for support, maintenance and regular database updates that allow the system, called CopySense, to detect newly released music.
Audible Magic’s Copysense nonsense was, and probably still is, a favourite of RIAA spinster Mitch Bainwol who spent many days touting it around Congress to the extent some people were wondering if the RIAA had shares in the company.
The so-called filtering software was also meticulously analysed by the EFF’s (Electronic Frontier Foundation) Chris Palmer and found seriously wanting.
The Post article goes on:
The RIAA is still sending DMCA notices, but has received more attention for its monthly waves of about 400 pre-litigation settlement letters, which allege that computers on college campuses nationwide are sharing music. Those letters demanded recipients pay an average of $3,500 to settle a potential copyright infringement lawsuit by multiple record companies.
OU received 100 such letters by mid-April, but has received none since it began using CopySense.
p2pnet has pondered the same thing several times.
That $60k is a retail price on the hardware/software combo — and probably is several thousand times the actual cost of producing the product. Why is it so high? Probably not because that’s the norm in business. Probably more because this isn’t about the law and copyright infringement. This is about greed, no matter what stories the RIAA use to justify their cause. No doubt they are getting a cut from CopySense sales – they will get their money one way or another.
I read someplace, possibly on a previous post here, a very good analogy. Typically if a student supposedly robs a store, and the police come a-knocking, the school is not under any obligation to give up information on the suspect. Why is this different? That they’re using the infrastructures in place to transmit their data? Or maybe its that Higher Ed buckles, doesn’t take itself or its own strengths and resources seriously. If institutions got together to stop the bullying, I believe we’d be in a better situation. But we just give into the scare tactic of “potential liability” because we can’t stand up and show that it’s injustice.
Besides, a lot of our infrastructure is made possible through government money anyway — why don’t we sue them?
Definitely stay tuned.
The BG News – University shuts down file sharing, October 21, 2008
CopySense nonsense – More RIAA CopySense nonsense, September 23, 2008
p2pnet – Ohio University pays RIAA ‘expert’, October 31, 2007
Wired Campus – The Cost of Copyright Compliance, October 31, 2007
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October 24th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
What the university needs to do instead is to block Limewire users’ shared-folder lists from being sent out. (Limewire is the only modern P2P client that does not allow users the option to disable list-sharing) That would eliminate all RIAA lawsuits, since then they would have no way of knowing how many or what files a person is sharing.
October 24th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
“package shaper”
October 24th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
“but now a lot have realized what they were doing was illegal and have removed the programs,” Jones said.”
He mean: “now they are doing their networking behind Tor or an open proxy so nobody can see them any more.”
Wahahahahahahahaha! What a crisis!
October 27th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
I’m a university student at a public school, and it really burns when we just had a huge budget cut that cut a lot of student programming, such as diversity initiatives, but the university is still going to have to pony up for this software. I’m glad I’m getting out next spring.