Colleges pledge new crackdown on students who download illegally
Students who download films and music onto their computers will face steep bills and official warnings under a new clampdown by college computing services. A formal university policy of tracking down and deleting illegally downloaded material has already been in place for several years. However rocketing downloads coupled with pressure from film distribution companies is forcing colleges to take a much harder line.
Christ Church JCR recently circulated an e-mail stating that film studios such as Paramount and Universal are able to track downloads to the Oxford network. ‘From that point OUCS is legally obliged to track down the college involved, then the college IT department has to track down the specific URL, find the person, and spend time deleting the film from that person’s computer,’ it stated.
Christ Church students caught by this method will be issued with an £80 bill to cover the ‘administrative costs’ entailed in tracking down illegal files, nearly £60 of which goes straight to the Oxford University Computing Services (OUCS). However the other £20 is a discretionary charge applied by the college, which Junior Censor Belinda Jack says is necessary to cover the extra hours put in by their computing staff.
“At the moment the computing officers donate this extra money to the JCR computing fund. If people start offending more than once, then fines will have to be imposed on top of these charges, and they would go into the college hardship fund, but as yet we haven’t had to fine anyone,” she said. Christ Church computing officer Andy Middleton admits that downloads have become an increasingly problematic issue in recent months.
He said:“The policy has been in place as long as I have worked here, but recently there has been more monitoring; we’re paying much more attention to what people are doing on the network. There’s definitely more downloading going on now, with everyone having iPods and sharing each others’ music.” One third year student, who wishes to remain anonymous, has already fallen victim to this more stringent monitoring.
Mr Middleton maintains she is not the first, as several students across the university have been charged under this policy in the past few years. Although the warning e-mail states that the the rule applies only to feature-length films and TV shows, Mr Middleton says other files, including music, could result in similar disciplinary action.
“The use of file sharing programs is banned under the University rules and any detected use of them has to be investigated and action taken where needed,” he said. In order to find illegally downloaded files computing managers have to examine the content of students’ computers, a privilege accorded them in the computing agreement signed by all students.
‘System Administrators have the right to access users’ files and examine network traffic, but only if necessary in pursuit of their role as System Administrators,’ reads the agreement. ‘They must endeavour to avoid specifically examining the contents of users’ files without proper authorisation,’ it continues, adding, ‘normally the user’s permission should be sought.
However Jen Corlew, a spokesperson for civil rights group Liberty, believes a more moderate solution is possible. “Whilst they do have rights as network administrators to access students’ computers, the question is whether this is a necessary and proportionate response. They should perhaps have issued a warning to students before taking this action.
Christ Church are the first college explicitly to warn students of the consequences of file sharing, and other colleges were reluctant to comment on their security procedures. OUCS deputy director Alan Gay refused to comment specifically on the issue, saying “We’re not the ones that make the policies; that’s the Proctors, we just pass on the information from the film studios to the colleges.” Dr Brian Gasser, clerk to the Proctors, echoed this sentiment.
“Generally for a first offence the issue will stay within the college. The Proctors only directly deal with repeat offenders or those grossly violating regulations, and there are only about three or four occurrences of this every year,” he explained.
27th Oct 2005