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DirectConnectBanInformation



What is this page about?

This page has information on why NetworkServices issued a letter asking Joseph Morales to discontinue use of the DirectConnect software from our campus intranet.


Summary

Dartmouth College alleges that there is evidence that copyrighted material is being shared over the Dartmouth Network using the DirectConnect P2P system.

BillBrawley (in the PDF below), said that an article in TheDartmouth newspaper1 brought this violation to the College's attention, and that "according to the article [Morales] also facilitated the copying and transmission of commercial copyright material by other students..." 2


What is interesting it that Brawley's email uses an article from TheDartmouth as part of the 'evidence' in the "Cease and Desist" document, but as far as I could see, the article in TheD does not give Dartmouth any (more) indication that copyrighted material is shared through the DirectConnect system.

In fact it is only Brawley who states that "...he tries to prevent any illegal sharing of copyrighted materials on peer-to-peer networks, in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.".
He also said that "...he ..received a notification ... because a copy of the new Harry Potter movie was found circulating on the Dartmouth network.", and that Computing Services gets notifications as frequently as once or twice a week ! (both quotes from TheD article).

While The D quotes Morales as saying "People who were previously using other programs like Kazaa or something will be using Direct Connect now .....It's cheaper for the college, and should speed up external Internet connections.", I was hard pressed to find evidence in the newspaper article to back up Brawley's first claim that Morales had first "used his personal computer...to transmit...unauthorized copies of...music, videos, and/or movies..." 2.

In fact, I searched the D's website for the words "copyright", "music", "mp3", "movie", "test", "transmit", "unauthorized", and "video".

So where is this evidence????

Although Brawley second claim, that Morales had "..facilitated the copying and transmission of commercial copyright material by other students..." 2, is technically correct, any computer tool such as an ftp server? can facilitate such actions. Just as we are not going to turn off ftp services at Dartmouth because that would be silly, unproductive and unwarranted, Morales' possesion and even his basic use of the DirectConnect software does not make him guilty of a punishable role as a "facilitator", does it?

Of course there existed the possibility that Brawley first heard of the DirectConnect software through the article in TheD. I highly doubt that the people in NetworkServices had no idea that a local P2P network was being heavily used, so it might be possible that upper administration decided to just pull the plug because they were afraid of litigation (just a guess, though.. :).


A few particulars of this situation are very interesting:

  1. Why did Dartmouth decide to act when it did? -- if they have been receiving complaints about copyrighted material for some time, why shut the DirectConnect system down today? (Were they threatened with a particularly big "stick" from the MPAA or something???)
  2. How are the outside companies "discovering" copyrighted materials on the network? I don't know how the DirectConnect program works, but for many services on Dartmouth servers, computer admins "wrap" the IP addresses to only grant access to computers with a "129.170.xxx.xxx" address. Restricting access to the servers would have several benefits:
    1. It would make the DirectConnect servers less vulnerable to attack from outside Dartmouth
    2. Prevent people outside our network from using the servers (and thus using up our "Commodity" Internet bandwidth),
    3. [Benefit?] Prevent the "big companies" from discovering materials on the network, because they would not have a "Dartmouth" IP address.
  3. From the article, BillBrawley seemed to indicate that the college was not agressively going after students, but instead dealing with individual incidents (when an outside company filed a complaint, etc..). If this is general college policy, (or merely Brawley's policy) it seems to bode well for the Dartmouth Community.

As well, Brawley's letter indicated that Morales could challenge the ban on using DirectConnect if he could show that he was only exchanging files for which he held the copyright. (IIRC this "challenge" process is a part of the DMCA).

So that is the state of affairs for the banning of DirectConnect. AFAIK, this ban only applies to Morales, although other individuals who use the service may receive similar letters in the future.


       RobinsonTryon


1 (see http://www.thedartmouth.com/article.php?aid=200211250103)
2 (see the PDF below)


The best part

Don't you love BlitzMail? I sent a letter to JosephMorales? asking him for the cease-and-desist information, and I got a response back in under a minute... :-)



The Correspondance

The first letter I received contained this information: 

--- Forwarded message from Joseph J. Morales ---

>Date: 12 Feb 2003 13:11:40 EST
>From: Joseph J. Morales
>Reply-To: joseph.j.morales
>Subject: direct connect

for all you who use direct connect i would advise downloading whatever you want now. 
The system will be shutting down tomorrow at midnite. Due to a Cease and Desist
letter from network services.


So I emailed Joseph back, and asked him for information on the Cease and Desist letter (I thought it would be great to add it to the wiki...) 


Date: 12 Feb 2003 15:48:49 EST
From: Robinson P. Tryon (make list)
Subject: Direct Connect?
To: Joseph J. Morales (Verbose)

hi,

I am an '03 interested in privacy and "rights" issues on campus relating to computing,
software, etc...

Hopefully I'm blitzing the right person, but I just got forwarded an email saying that
Network Services sent a 'Cease and Desist' letter to whomever is running Direct Connect 
on the campus network.

I'm running a wiki (online collaborative tool) here (http://sa/twiki/bin/view/Linux/WebHome). 
It's currently being used to store information about Linux, but I'd like it to become 
an source of information concerning all kinds of things about Dartmouth.

Recently I've been adding information about the College's policy about Blitzmail records, 
information about the proximity-card doorlock system, etc...

I'd love to put a copy of the Cease and Desist letter on the wiki (and any other 
correspondance you have with Network Services), so I can document what kind of activity 
the college allows/prohibits, and make sure that they are being fair.

I'd guess you could say that I'd like the wiki to help be a 'watchdog' of the college's 
activities and policies....and make sure that they are acting fairly and in the students' 
best interests..... :)



cheers,
--Robinson

As I said above, Joseph got back to me really fast, and sent along an email (with PDF attachment) from BillBrawley. Of course, I already knew about BillBrawley from the MicrosoftCampusAgreementSaga (I should mention that Brawley was very curteous and helpful with regards to the Microsoft License...) 


Date: 12 Feb 2003 15:51:35 EST
From: Joseph J. Morales (make list)
Subject: Copyright Policy Compliance
To: Robinson P. Tryon (Verbose)

Here is what i received. Feel free to put it up on your system.
--- Forwarded message from Bill Brawley ---

>Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 09:58:54 -0500
>Subject: Copyright Policy Compliance
>Cc: Robert Donin , 
Marcia Kelly , 
Bill Brawley 
>To: Joseph.J.Morales@Dartmouth.EDU
>From: Bill Brawley 

Dear Mr. Morales,

Enclosed is an image of a letter I have sent to you via Hinman mail. It is a reminder 
of Dartmouth College policy regarding copyright compliance, and references an article 
published in The Dartmouth newspaper regarding your involvement with a file-sharing 
system.

Please read and respond to the letter at your earliest convenience. If you cannot open 
the enclosed PDF file, or if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Thank you.

Bill

The letter from Brawley (in pdf form) is available here: JJM_Copyright_letter.pdf.

I hope to have a plaintext/html version available soon.




RobinsonTryon - 12 Feb 2003

A useful reference for y'all is the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse. Also see the Open Directory category on the DMCA

SamReisner - 12 Feb 2003