Recently the ESA targeted a fellow SFU student under the assumption that they were distributing content under the domain of one of their contributing members. At this time it is not certain how the the students privacy was infringed, or how the ESA was able to enforce a U.S. copyright law on Canadian grounds.
It is my assumption that the association was only able to obtain the universities identification through Internet tracking methods. Where by they then filed a complaint against the university as this is a breach of the SFU Network Usage Policy. The school then most likely proceeded to investigate the network while looking through past network logs for trends or outstanding network behavior. They then used this information to interpolate users with high bandwidth usages or specific network content.
The following Email message was sent to the student who was allegedly responsible for the ESA complaint.
To: Student
Cc: Peter Van Epp; Lorenzo Costantino; bahram_gustaspi@sfu.ca; help@sfu.ca; cars-frontdesk@sfu.ca;
Subject: Copyright infringement allegation
Dear Student
The University recently received a complaint from the Entertainment Software Association alleging that the computer you used to log into SFU's network was distributing their copyrighted material over the Internet which is a violation of Canadian Copyright Law. Our investigation confirmed that your computer was running what appears to be peer to peer file sharing software at the time indicated. As a result we have blocked your computer's access to SFU's network. The network will be unavailable to your computer for two weeks from the
date of the blockage.
This blockage only applies to your computer and does not affect your computer account. During this time the University's lab computers will continue to be available for you to complete your work while on campus and your computer will still be able to access SFU services through your ISP from home.
If you believe that this allegation is in error please arrange to see the director by phoning 778-782-3234 during normal business hours to arrange an appointment.
--
Dr. Keir Novik / Network Services, Simon Fraser University
It would be safe to assume that the ESA failed in identifying the student directly from the circumstances and available information. They never proceeded to press copyright infringement charges against the student, and it appears the university withheld the personal information of the student from the association.
Although this may serve as a warning to some, the student wont even be effected by the resulting ban. They managed to avoid this by circumnavigating the ban which was imposed over the computers MAC address. They did this with a simple program known as MacMakeUp, which allows the user to change the MAC address of their computer effectively masquerading as another computer.
Although so far this is the only student I am aware of who has been targeted by the ESA, I do believe that the student will fight this allegation.
Posts
