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illegal downloading at university actually miss interpreted

nunes013

nunes013

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 24, 2010
1,284
185
Connecticut
So this is a good story that i just wanted some input on.

I got an automated call from my university at 10:50 tonight saying that they had 3 instances of me downloading illegal music and they might pursue it in court for 600,000 dollars. well it turns out what they dont know is i have my own router in my dorm with an external hd attached and what i actually do is stream movies to my computer that i rip when i go home on some weekends. basically im in the process of ripping my dvds to my hd and when i get home i do a few. when i go back i upload them to my hd.

what i think they are seeing is me uploading them to my drive on the network which has to pass their server before it hits my drive. so now my resident director is calling IT tomorrow to tell them and we r going to see what they say.

what does anyone here say as i have nvr downloaded anything illegal at school. its just kind of disturbing being on the hook for 600,000 dollars for something i didnt do.
 
your own university? 600,000 dollars? tell them to **** off. :D thats crazy talk.
 
zioxide said:
your own university? 600,000 dollars? tell them to **** off. :D thats crazy talk.
Click to expand...

well thats the thing, they gave some acronym of what they were but didnt say what it actually was, just the acronym. it was a university number though. and they didnt say who i owe, they just said could be taken to court for 600,000 dollars.
 
nunes013 said:
So this is a good story that i just wanted some input on.

I got an automated call from my university at 10:50 tonight saying that they had 3 instances of me downloading illegal music and they might pursue it in court for 600,000 dollars. well it turns out what they dont know is i have my own router in my dorm with an external hd attached and what i actually do is stream movies to my computer that i rip when i go home on some weekends. basically im in the process of ripping my dvds to my hd and when i get home i do a few. when i go back i upload them to my hd.

what i think they are seeing is me uploading them to my drive on the network which has to pass their server before it hits my drive. so now my resident director is calling IT tomorrow to tell them and we r going to see what they say.

what does anyone here say as i have nvr downloaded anything illegal at school. its just kind of disturbing being on the hook for 600,000 dollars for something i didnt do.
Click to expand...

This seems kind of fishy to me. For one thing, it seems more likely you would have got something more formal. Your university detecting P2P, seems like they would ask beforehand whether you were torrenting or using legitimate services. Something like this would seem more appropriate in an email or letter to your on-campus or off-campus address, such as receiving a cease and desist letter from your university, or rather, the cease and desist letter from the RIAA/MPAA forwarded.
 
You might want to look into your schools IT policy. I am willing to bet that your router violates their rules and they will tell you to disconnect it.

They like to maintain a very tight control over them and it is 1 port 1 computer. A router they do not control plugged into those ports is a HUGE and I mean HUGE no no.

That being said I know I broke that rule while I lived in the dorms but I know some of the IT staff currently at the same school and the policy is still in place. Hell they are cracking down a bit harder on the rule breakers now days.
 
Working for the OIT department here at my school:

We don't monitor any web activity, that is all the work of the RIAA and MPAA.

If we are informed of of a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) violation through them, all we can do is block access to that specific MAC address (we don't register computers here, supposedly will next year) and wait for their phone call about their internet not working.

From there its basically a (BS) talking to from ResLife about the "evils" of downloading and a "do it again and there will be trouble".

This whole situation is royally ****ed up IMO, being able to monitor individual's internet usage when you have absolutely no connection or contact to the organizations (RIAA & MPAA) is just wrong. That means they are just free to stare at your transmissions until they finally find a violation, lets not even get into the downright absurdly high "damages" penalties they try to stick on poor college students.

That said, are you sure you don't have any torrent, p2p, or other data transmission apps that start up in the background? We always notice an uptick in violations right after breaks because kids go on downloading sprees when they get home, forget that they didn't close out the program, and are hit with a violation simply for waking their computer up from sleep as it starts transmitting.
 
benthewraith said:
This seems kind of fishy to me. For one thing, it seems more likely you would have got something more formal. Your university detecting P2P, seems like they would ask beforehand whether you were torrenting or using legitimate services. Something like this would seem more appropriate in an email or letter to your on-campus or off-campus address, such as receiving a cease and desist letter from your university, or rather, the cease and desist letter from the RIAA/MPAA forwarded.
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i thought so to and my resident director said that it could be some kind of false call and people for some reason can get through university numbers. the thing is my name is on the router if it connects to their server i feel like thats how they know. on the other hand at the end of the message it said please leave your response. i thought that was kind of weird that they said that instead of like go see IT or something.

Rodimus Prime said:
You might want to look into your schools IT policy. I am willing to bet that your router violates their rules and they will tell you to disconnect it.

They like to maintain a very tight control over them and it is 1 port 1 computer. A router they do not control plugged into those ports is a HUGE and I mean HUGE no no.

That being said I know I broke that rule while I lived in the dorms but I know some of the IT staff currently at the same school and the policy is still in place. Hell they are cracking down a bit harder on the rule breakers now days.
Click to expand...

it doesnt violate because a emailed IT at the beginning of the year and they said it was ok. what i think it might have been is they said they had three times and sunday night when i came back from break i uploaded the movies i ripped and from my mypassport to my mybook and i did it wirelessly. the usb cable from the mypassport kept getting loose from my usb on my computer and i got the error three times that said the dsik wasnt ejected properly. so eventually i got it through but each time there was like 10 gb going through and they probably saw that.

but anyway im meeting with my RD tonight after she calls IT and shes going to let me know so ill post here later.

Thanks everyone!!!
 
nunes013 said:
well thats the thing, they gave some acronym of what they were but didnt say what it actually was, just the acronym. it was a university number though. and they didnt say who i owe, they just said could be taken to court for 600,000 dollars.
Click to expand...

It's probably the RIAA or MPAA.

If it's neither of those organizations, don't bother responding. They're just trying to extract a settlement from you.

Actually, I'm having a hard time seeing this being the case. No outside organization besides your IT department would have a reason to contact you unless they detected your IP address on a torrent.

Regardless, contact your school IT, but do not respond. It's probably just another group trying to extract settlements.
 
it was a prank it turns out. somebody from the school used a public university line and did it so its all good now lol
 
i guess theres a website that masks a real number so when the site called me, it showed up as a university phone. the person gets to pick the number that calls the persons phone then leaves one of several pre recorded messages.
 
nunes013 said:
i guess theres a website that masks a real number so when the site called me, it showed up as a university phone. the person gets to pick the number that calls the persons phone then leaves one of several pre recorded messages.
Click to expand...

i don't know the specifics but there is/was an app on Droids that did that. my friend used to call my from my girlfriends number. it was f*ing annoying. i don't get how that got published in their app store in the first place...
 
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