Hank [BS/MSEE,
MSM $$$, Ph.D. Mgmt] teaches 
CreditCard @ Channel 9 Sunday reported "…the anti-piracy goons at the MPAA created a tool for spying on University students’ computer activities called "University toolkit", which they are heavily promoting to University administrators across the USA. The tool is designed to allow the MPAA to keep track of Internet activities of college students.
If that isn’t enough the tool is actually a modified version of Xubuntu, and in fact doesn’t change any of the artwork. No source code is provided on their website either at http://universitytoolkit.org/. There would be reason to believe that they are at minimum violating Ubuntu’s trademark, and likely also violating the GPL and thus committing copyright infringement or "piracy" as they like to call it."
What this means in simple terms for readers of this blog who are students at a university somewhere,
if the university so chooses, they can download this free software provided by the very organization who is out to "catch" you downloading "stuff" and sniff what you are in fact doing on your computer on the university’s network. I won’t go into all the detail, but they can ascertain the who/what/when of your movie downloads, what software you are using to "share" "stuff" with, etc. Big brother can indeed do more than look over your shoulder. While you pay to use university Internet access as part of your fees, there are strings attached that you need to be aware of. See below for a screen shot of the kind of information that can be gleaned using the University Toolkit. Caveat Emptor. Hank
16 Responses to “MPAA endorses wiretapping American college students”
- 1 Trackback on Jan 13th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Hank if they are copyright infringement then they would probably get shut down. I do not like the sound of this because it seems to me violates our right to privacy. If there is website that gives free downloads then it should be okay. I know I don’t file share and probably never will, but for the people that do they should know there is a risk in getting caught is there.
The main question is how far a website go to make something that might violate a right to privacy or other rights?
How ironic that they might commit the same sin they are trying to stop by using this software! I reluctantly agree that piracy is not right, and I stopped all my file sharing, but for them to have the ability to see everything we’re doing not right either. I’m thankful I’m not on Purdue’s network anymore, but I would hope Purdue would not let this software in. Yet another reminder that we need to be careful about the things we sign off on and accept especially on the internet.
Kevin brings a good point up. These people are hypocrites to the extreme, trying to catch you doing illegal activities while at the same time using someone else’s program…? It feels like we are more and more limited with this “great” deal on internet.
I also agree… the technology software is cool that it can do that however if it is a copyright infringement from another product than there is no way they should be using it. The Universities that are using this are definately hypocrites.
File sharing is a big problem and will continue to be as long as there is the internet. I don’t think that this ‘fear’ tactic will work because most students won’t stop sharing until they are caught. This software looks like it catches the IP address of the user. However, the user can “mask” his/her IP addressd using other software. File sharers should be aware of the chance and hopefully they have the moral to see that this activity is unjust.
I would say that a copyright infringement is quite high in this day and age! At the same time though this goes back to the privacy issues that people think should be observed. Is this overstepping that boundry again? As far as the program though, these people should be ashamed that they are using someone else’s program and work. Te Universities in exchange should also have looked into the program and checked where to see this product came from. This is more an issue of morals than business though. Yes money is invovled so there is business but that isnt the main problem. The main problem is copyright infringement and moral though.
Even if universities used this program they couldn’t catch all the downloaders. As soon as the program comes out there wil be programmers all over it. I about a week there will be a anti-product on the market. This sis the same thing that iTunes thought they were doing with their mp4 protection on songs and behold there is a program to reverse it. In my opinion this would be a total waste of money for universities but its always great to know BIG BROTHER is watching!!!!!
“No source code is provided on their website…” How would school officials be sure that the “University Toolkit” itself isn’t a Trojan Horse?? How could school officials be sure there isn’t some major league vulnerability in the “University Toolkit” that would expose the schools using this software to unacceptable risk?? If so, will school’s get software support??
Too many dangerous unanswered questions.
I really don’t understand what motivation Purdue university would have to do this. All it will do is piss of Purdue’s customers (students). This is not in purdue’s best interest.
Wait a min…University Toolkit is a modded version of…Xubuntu?! How? Xubuntu is an OS and U. Toolkit is a program, right?! But w/e I guess!
And I like your choice of the word “goon” here! And as far as using a linux product goes, they SHOULD give the source code. And to everyone thinking that they have violated copyright laws, technically they have not violated any copyright coz the world of linux in itself is heavily copyright infringed! Didn’t get it? Its called Open-Source. At the same time they must give the source code since even thought copyrights are not applicable here, copylefts are aka GNU Public License.
On their 2 page summary they say that they do not communicate the results to MPAA and monitor student activity to that much detail, but I think what they say is BS coz hey, its MPAA!
PS Liked my shirt?!
I guess I can understand both sides of the argument. University students have the right to privacy over the net, but if they are doing something illegal, they should be stopped… this is a fuzzy topic in this sense. A lot of times what it all boils down to is, are the right people taking care of the problem. In this situation, I would say that it should be solely up to the police to catch such violaters over the internet. College is not a place to baby or give its students a slap on the hand… so why start now? Such illegal matters should be left up to the people who recieve paychecks to deal with them.
Oh yea, and Aditya, I didn’t like you shirt- FYI
At a school as large as Purdue, I don’t think employing this software would be very beneficial because the resources required to “catch” someone would be pretty substantial. However, that doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to infringe on our privacy. The network is Purdue’s and they can do whatever they want with it. If they did implement this software, even though it may be illegal and hypocritical, there is really nothing to do about it. Purdue probably would never (well hopefully would never) download this type of software, but they have the right to do so. If that ticks some people off, oh well, I’m sure Purdue and other universities using this software have legitimate reasons for doing so besides getting their students into trouble. And as always, if you don’t like something, you don’t have to use it.
I dont really understand this. If many universities choose to adopt this technology..thus- initiating alot of speculation by outside parties (media..etc)..wouldnt that draw alot of attention to the fact that this is pretty much pirated software? And wouldnt that attention attract certain moral/ethical question into the universities using the software? I dont know alot about this type of thing..but i would think that this would be of positive nature.
As far as the glorified “spy kit” that they are pedaling..I guess I dont really have any opinion. We would be using their network..which- by definition of ownership..would allow them to take such royalties.
This reminds me of a great blog entry by the infamous The Pirate Bay, an infamous Swedish download site you’ve undoubtedly heard about. The full text is pasted below.
“TPB files charges against media companies
Thanks to the email-leakage from MediaDefender-Defenders we now have proof of the things we’ve been suspecting for a long time; the big record and movie labels are paying professional hackers, saboteurs and ddosers to destroy our trackers.
While browsing through the email we identified the companies that are also active in Sweden and we have tonight reported these incidents to the police. The charges are infrastructural sabotage, denial of service attacks, hacking and spamming, all of these on a commercial level.
The companies that are being reported are the following:
* Twentieth Century Fox, Sweden AB
* Emi Music Sweden AB
* Universal Music Group Sweden AB
* Universal Pictures Nordic AB
* Paramount Home Entertainment (Sweden) AB
* Atari Nordic AB
* Activision Nordic Filial Till Activision (Uk) Ltd
* Ubisoft Sweden AB
* Sony Bmg Music Entertainment (Sweden) AB
* Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Nordic AB
“
I don’t see why the movie industry doesn’t do what the big networks like ABC and NBC are doing by offering their movies to be viewed for free with limited advertisements. I’m sure thats worked really well for them, and I believe it would do the same for the movie industry. I also think with the addition of things like Redbox is helping too. I think the easier the industry makes content available and the cheaper they make it, the less piracy they’ll have to worry about. They need to realize there will always be people that are going to find ways to get it for free, but they need to work on making content easily available to others.