Stanford To Charge Reconnect Fee For DMCA Notices 344
theantipop writes "Stanford didn't like appearing on the MPAA's list of 25 worst offenders. Last week the university issued notice of a new policy in which students are charged a reconnection fee, ranging from $100 to $1000, if they fail to respond quickly enough to a DMCA complaint. The policy is to take effect September 1 this year. As a show of 'good faith' they are graciously allowing all students to start at the $100 fee level for subsequent notices."
What's Next? (Score:1, Insightful)
College candidates - reprioritize your preferences (Score:3, Insightful)
A university/college which gives more crap for what money bosses think than its students think is a one that is down the drain. Their reputation and quality of graduates tend to deteriorate rapidly in 5-10 years, which affects even old time graduates.
Just choose a university that cant stomach being a bitch to big buck.
Due diligence. (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, they checked to make sure the charges were real before the instituted the fines, right?
I mean, these wouldn't possibly be trumped up charges after all.
What if the DMCA notice is fradulent or incorrect? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a bunch of horseshit. The MPAA and RIAA are winning at their game with colleges when more should be turning to the legal minds on campus to see what they can do to shut this finger pointing media game that they are playing.
abuse (Score:5, Insightful)
sweet.
Re:College candidates - reprioritize your preferen (Score:2, Insightful)
While I believe that Stanford buckling to "Big Buck" pressure is lame beyond belief, I can't agree with your argument. For prospective students to ignore Stanford because for the next four years they wouldn't be able to easily torrent some movies and risk their future and/or proximity to home by attending another college that happens to ignore the DMCA notices is just shortsighted.
Re:PDF Dump (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:College candidates - reprioritize your preferen (Score:2, Insightful)
I tend to disagree a bit here. A universities reputation is based on the quality of its research and how well it's graduates to in the work force. Research is paid for by outside companies which ARE concerned about their IP. A company will not want to be associated with a "pirate" university.
Re:If any of them pay this fee... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why?
It's Stanford's network; if you pirate files and violate the terms of use agreement you signed back when you activated your connection, they've got every right to kick you off the network, and every right to fine you to let you back on. And considering how important the internet is in higher education these days (almost all of my homework assignments, for example, are issued online and occasionally submitted electronically as well), I'd say that paying the fine so you've got your connection back is a pretty good idea.
Paying the fine so they can get their connection back isn't stupid. It's a necessity.
Re:Economics here... (Score:5, Insightful)
The short version (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If any of them pay this fee... (Score:4, Insightful)
I haven't either. No need, my hallway had 4 open APs last I checked.
Re:If any of them pay this fee... (Score:3, Insightful)
Paying the fine so they can get their connection back isn't stupid. It's a necessity.
The stupidity is in getting disconnected in the first place.
That is already so. (Score:5, Insightful)
Next you wont be able to graduate unless you pay your unpaid DMCA notices.
Most schools require a zero balance to graduate.
Being denied net access is one of the principle wrongs of the right to read story [gnu.org]. Even today, that is fatal. Witout network access, you can't register for classes. If Stanford has special policies for computers within their network which they deny to computers outside their network all of those services are denied for those "disconnected".
More generous than before (Score:5, Insightful)
Read it carefully - roughly, after the first notice, it's a $100 fee. After the second notice, it's $500 plus a notice to the residence dean (like a referral to the principle). After the third, it's $1000 plus a referral to Judicial Affairs (which, given Stanford's honor code, is likely to result in a suspension). The previous policy was a network disconnect until a student certifies offending material is removed, the second offense was another disconnect plus a notice to the residence dean, then after the third, referral to Judicial Affairs and a student was PERMENANTLY BANNED from the Stanford network. (Makes it quite difficult to do classwork.) I'm personally bothered with this new policy; makes it too easy for a rich kid to ignore everything.
Stanford's networking folks do look carefully at the notices, protect student privacy unless faced with a court order, and a student can contest the DMCA takedown notice without penalty with the eager assistence of Student Legal Affairs - although doing so waives your privacy. As of two years ago, no student had ever contested a notice - they were all clear-cut DMCA violations. And only well-documented violations ever got passed to students.
Now, let's be honest here ... I have yet to see a single person on Slashdot ever suggest running a file-sharing service from their desktop at work. So exactly why is a university a different story? Regardless of the merits of the DMCA itself (I personally think it's a stupid law, guilty-until-proven-innocent and with punishments far worse than the violation itself), the DMCA is still the law; why should a university be expected to shield individuals engaged in illegal behavior?
Citizens, Reclaim Your College (Score:3, Insightful)
Just roll Stanford down in your list of preferred colleges/universities.
What and just let the MAFIAA have Stanford and everything it does? NFW. It is outrageous that people can be thrown off their network, fined and out of school without a trial on the word of a big dumb company that's got a reputation for suing innocent people. This needs to be fought at every level. We can't let big dumb publishers destroy public institutions over their pop proffits. Pop music and movies are not worth this. Lawrence Lessig [wikipedia.org] must be furious. Do you think he's going just leave? Where will you go that can't be screwed over?
Re:College candidates - reprioritize your preferen (Score:3, Insightful)
Stanford student speaking... (Score:1, Insightful)
Second off, they already had a three-strike policy, this basically just adds the fine ("reconnection fee").
Third off, this is disappointing but not surprising, as Stanford (being the "west coast faux ivy") seems to be even more reputation-paranoid than most schools, and really doesn't care at all about the quality of life for students (particularly off campus grad students, but I digress). Mostly this is annoying because they buy into the "stealing" rhetoric in the official announcements, and because it stands in stark contrast to the recent Harvard law professor who said that universities should fight this crap.
The only thing this place has going for it is the actual quality of the academics and most of the professors. Good thing that's the most important part of a school. Well, I guess the architecture is nice too...
Re:College candidates - reprioritize your preferen (Score:5, Insightful)
They're punishing students for ACCUSATIONS (Score:4, Insightful)
The policy fines students for being accused. THE KID DOESN'T HAVE TO BE GUILTY OF ANYTHING, THEY GET FINED FOR BEING ACCUSED. Do *you* want to go to a school where you're not innocent until proven guilty, you're not even guilty until proven innocent, you're just automatically and permanently guilty the moment anyone makes an accusation?
I had to write up the policy for a university dealing with the question of what to do with RIAA complaints a few years ago. In my opinion, Stanford is being *monumentally* stupid. I told the university I worked for to become an ISP and start charging students for internet access if they wanted it, and put no restrictions on that access aside from what minor restrictions an ordinary residential ISP might place. Then it would all be *their* problem, not the university's.
Re:College candidates - reprioritize your preferen (Score:1, Insightful)
The real reason (Score:3, Insightful)
As a show of good faith, for the first year all collected money will not offset the salaries, but will in fact go directly to the student government.
To reiterate, they're just shifting the costs of responding to DMCA complaints onto the students too dumb to get their warez and MP3s from usenet like the rest of us
Re:"Reconnect fee"? (Score:2, Insightful)
>A: No, of course it doesn't.
You're right. That's not what Stanford is saying. They're saying "between you, you force us to employ 3 people handling this that we wouldn't otherwise. So we're putting in a tax on the behavior that has caused us to employ them."
Don't like it? Don't steal files. Cry "but I've not been proven guilty" all you want, but the XXaa won't be sending takedown notices of your dissertation and research papers without you having baited them into it.
And responding to the DMCA takedown notice within 48 hours will keep you from being disconnected - and thus subject to the tax - in the first place. So if you ARE baiting them into papering you, keep on top of it. File a rebuttal with Stanford, documenting your copyright (or permission/license to post).
> This goes right up there with my U's $100 "administrative fee" they charge for forwarding you an email complaining about file sharing.
Same argument: a tax on the behavior that causes them to employ people to handle the results. Still, your school should have a policy of negating the "fee" if you can prove that the complaint is bogus. If they don't, YOU (a person provably interested) should talk to the administration about it.
Re:College candidates - reprioritize your preferen (Score:5, Insightful)
Your implication that 3-5 years of campus life means a hill of beans to the 50-60 years you're likely to spend afterwards suggests to me that you're a recent graduate, if even that.
Let me put it this way. Within 5 years of graduating college, you will have forgotten what it was even like. (That's especially true if you spend the entire time drunk like a lot of college kids do.) So it's a huge mistake to base your choice - which affects your entire life afterwards - on whether or not you like the campus. Ditto for DMCA policies, which are just as irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
You should be basing your college choices on three things, and only three things: a) quality of education, b) reputation in your chosen field, and c) networking opportunities. Using any other criteria is sacrificing decades of your life for a couple of good years that you will probably just forget about once you get out into the real world. The last thing you want is to be stuck in some dead-end job when you're 30, feeling like you have no future and thinking "maybe if I'd gone to a different school, I'd have a better job, more friends and more money right now..."
The good news for you is that it sounds like you may still have time to transfer to MIT. That's assuming you actually got accepted there, of course.
Re:If any of them pay this fee... (Score:1, Insightful)
That's all well and good, but it doesn't take into account how often DMCA notices have been issued inaccurately.
Re:College candidates - reprioritize your preferen (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:College candidates - reprioritize your preferen (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyway, the quality of education at most top tear schools is extremely over rated. Most of a schools reputation is based around the quality of students they admit not the quality of education they supply. As to networking it's more important to connect with the right type of person than people at the right school. My older sister went to Washington and Lee and avoided connecting to people with money and spent most of her time with the international students and she is making around 1/2 what I do right now. On the other hand, I got my first 2 jobs because I had good connections.
There are a lot of great schools in the US spending a lot of time ranking which is 1st though 15th is a waste of time. Back in HS most people only have a vague understanding of what they want out of life so picking the best CS school is silly when you might end up studding math and getting masters in neuroscience. I think it's most important to pick and environment and social group that you're comfortable with vs. some extremely arbitrary school rank.
PS: In 5 years people look at you funny when you include your collage GPA and in 20 years the collage you went to is little more than a foot note when compared to your work history and grad school. How far you go is more about when you decide to cost than which scool you went to.
Re:College candidates - reprioritize your preferen (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:College candidates - reprioritize your preferen (Score:2, Insightful)
Let me give you a huge clue: the purpose of a University is to further research in one or more disciplines. That is all. Undergraduates are there to learn the fundamentals of that field, preparing themselves to contribute after a few years. If most people leave academia after graduating, that's acceptable only because a sufficient proportion of excellent students move to the next stage.
With this in mind, there is only one question in your choice of university: Will it help me increase my skills and knowledge in my chosen discipline, so I can contribute further to it? It doesn't matter whether it's a brand name Uni or the local community college, as long as it helps you improve sufficiently: it's your brain that's going to be doing the work, your brain that can choose which challenges to face. You build a reputation in the academic community by what you write, not what people in the same dorm room as you have written.
Had you begun your post, "If your aim is to increase your salary by riding the coat tails of researchers at certain brand name Universities, getting out into the corporate world as soon as you have a piece of paper to wave about..." then I might be more inclined to agree with you. But then you're just another abortion, acceptable to academia only because not everyone who graduates is like you.
And you have as many chances in life to do that as you have half-decades. The only job that's dead-end is the one you are working on when you die.
Ashamed of my alma mater (Score:3, Insightful)
Piracy is wrong, and Stanford should make every effort to prevent it on their networks. I have no doubt that piracy takes place there. However a review of RIAA court cases would show that they quite often make claims they can't substantiate. In the case of Stanford and its students, where's the proof?
In essence Stanford is being asked to provide the proof. What's worse, the university is looking to make the accused students pay for the investigation before handing them over to their accusers.
I know there are legitimate uses for BitTorrent and the like, but I'd feel better if the university simply blocked its use. Make a proactive effort to prevent piracy, and let that be their defense against the RIAA and MPAA. Continue to educate the students in the issues of copyright and enforce that the same way you enforce other issues--through the student code of conduct.
I understand the need to mitigate the cost of dealing with the RIAA/MPAA. Ideally this would be done by passing the costs on to the people who illegally download copyrighted content rather than all students, which is what this policy attempts to do. That's very difficult when you can't absolutely prove who the pirates are. The RIAA and MPAA have created a climate that adds this additional overhead to the cost of running a large network, and I'm saddened to see that Stanford has decided to pay this tax.
Making deals with the RIAA/MPAA is like making deals with the devil. On the surface you may benefit but in the end you end up losing your soul.
yes it does (Score:5, Insightful)
you are making a mistake of evaluating human beings like machines - better in environments that will bring 'optimal' results for some standard goal.
it is not as such. humans are emotionally, psychologically complex creatures.
spending 3-5 years in an environment that excites you, fires you up, is fun and fulfilling with good atmosphere and social company that SUITS oneself, and in youth years of 18-22, the "free" years, which fundamentally and finally shapes and molds one's character, outlook on life and approach to life makes great positive difference than spending 3-5 years in an environment in which you will live indifference or dislike.
the former makes one into a happy persona that will sail easily through life, the latter makes one into an automaton.
Re:College candidates - reprioritize your preferen (Score:3, Insightful)
They spend too much time on grades so they'll get into a good grad school
They spend too much time getting a good degree to get a career started
They spend too much time working to raise up through the company ladder
They spend too much time earning money for their retirement
And in all that, they fail to live in the moment. Those are the prime candidates for a mid-life crisis or ending up old and bitter. people that realize they're getting old and still not having a good time. Then they decide to get that sporty car, dress up like a youngster and try to score with the college coeds.
Three to five years in your prime is a long time - if you don't think you're going to have a good time it's probably not worth it. Consider it a lot like savings, on the one hand you shouldn't send yourself into endless credit card debt, but you're also not supposed to eat ramen noodles and water 24/7/365 to minimize your student loans.
Remember, your life isn't ranked at the finish line. The quality of life is the sum of all parts of your life, which of course means you shouldn't blow your future but you shouldn't ignore the present either. Of course in the short term most of have bad times and boring times from time to time. But in the long run, if you have a good life and the outlook of a decent life go for it. If that's an either/or, stop up and think again...
Re:They're punishing students for ACCUSATIONS (Score:1, Insightful)
Good point, you can only get students booted that go home for the weekend. I stand corrected. As long as most students get justice, I guess it's ok that students who aren't there on the weekend get the shaft.
Re:College candidates - reprioritize your preferen (Score:5, Insightful)
While avoiding Stanford for DMCA reasons may ultimately be a trivial reason, it does show that Stanford puts it's own interests above the education and well being of it's students. Do you really think that this place will have good academic counciling, will encourage you to study what you find interest in, etc.?
Re:Wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Economics here... (Score:2, Insightful)
Inertia's a bitch. You can't expect a company to change overnight. They don't like to take risks. It's too risky.
A friend of mine planned to use Apple DRMed songs at their wedding. They dropped the tracks on a laptop and went off. Unfortunately, they didn't "authorize" that computer and there wasn't Internet access at the location. I doubt they cared about DRM up until that point.
They've had YEARS to work out a digital delivery system. They haven't even tried. It's too risky not to innovate. If someone does what you do better, then you're out of a job. They're lucky enough to have a monopoly, but even those fall (because they're lazy).
For music, now you don't have to ship physical copies to my region, you just need one. You can also organize it in as many categories as needed. No need to physically place it in one section or split up your stock in two or three. I have the option of putting in on a CD or listening to it on my iPod. I can also get it in the middle of the night (no need to pay for shipping or pay clerks to handle the transaction).
Movies get an even better deal. If theaters had a digital distribution system there would be more show times available. You wouldn't need to have multiple prints, rewind the film, or worry about damaged film. You also don't have to ship them or dispose of them. So more independent films can be accessible to the public (lower barrier to entry). Ticket prices (could) come down. You don't have to worry about the dirt/hair/scratches that collect on a film after being played all week, film weave, or many other problems.
Re:how is this a big deal? (Score:1, Insightful)
How are these notices delivered to students? Is there any check/guarantee to ensure that a student has received and read the message? Maybe it got lost in the mail or was picked up as spam in an email filter.
More importantly, what if a student is camping for a week with their friends and is totally disconnected from the outside world? Or they're overseas on holiday. Or they're in the middle of exams and therefore don't have time to read emails and check the mail.
The oneness is on the student to always check their mail/email every single day of the year to ensure that they aren't receiving a DMCA notice (and they still have to do this, even if they've never used a computer in their entire life!). I say "single day" because it can easily take 24hrs for the letter/email to be sent to the student.
However, I assume the computer science department doing the 'pirating' won't be affected by this. They'll just install some proxying