Ohio University is in the process of purchasing software that can block students from sharing copyrighted music and movies, but it won't stop students from sharing software and other illegally traded files.
A product offered by California-based Audible Magic allows the university to stop just illegal file sharing, instead of all peer-to-peer programs, as it did in April. The company's Copysense Network Application, a combination of hardware and software, can detect and block users from sending or receiving copyrighted files.
Earlier this year, Brice Bible, the university's chief information officer, implemented a policy to block all peer-to-peer traffic, stopping most file sharing. Users with a legal need to file share could ask for an exception.
That policy was an abrupt change from that implemented during Winter Quarter by then-interim CIO Shawn Ostermann. At the time, he refused to block or limit file sharing on the campus network because of its legal uses.
Monthly threats of legal action against college students using peer-to-peer programs to swap copyrighted music have lead universities across the country to revisit their policies on copyright infringement.
With Copysense, the university has found a middle ground, said Tom Conley, a senior IT security analyst with the university.
We're very serious about it and we're in the process of purchasing it
Conley said of Copysense.
The new system will change how file sharers are caught but not the university's policies on, or punishments for, illegal use of peer-to-peer programs.
First time offenders will lose Internet access at the location where they plug into the Internet, or on the wireless network, until they call the IT help desk and pledge not to share copyrighted files. Second time offenders will be referred to judiciaries.
Copysense works by comparing packets of data on the network to a database of known copyrighted audio, provided by record labels and film studios. That database is updated nightly, said Vance Ikezoye, Audible Magic's president and CEO.
Think of it as a virus scanning software but instead of viruses we look for copyrighted files Ikezoye said.
Because Copysense works by analyzing how content sounds, it cannot filter copyrighted images and identifies movies based on their audio. This allows encrypted files to pass through its filters unmolested.
Point-to-point encryption ' where only the sender and a specified recipient know how to decrypt the shared information ' would likely be unaffected by Audible Magic, Conley said, but any public sharing would be much more difficult to hide.
This makes it unlikely that Copysense will stop tech-saavy file sharers who abandoned the university's DC++ file sharing hub when it was shut down in May and moved to WASTE, a private file sharing network which uses formidable encryption. Standard encryption available in popular BitTorrent clients would be much less likely to escape detection.
Depending on the way a network is structured, it may take two Copysense appliances to detect all copyright infringement on a network ' one to analyze internal traffic and another for traffic entering and exiting the network, Ikezoye said.
Conley would not specify where on the OU network the Copysense application is, but said that its at a place on the network where it sees an awful lot of traffic.
Although Copysense was blocking copyrighted content on OU's network at the end of Spring Quarter, Conley said a sudden Fall Quarter increase in peer-to-peer traffic could swamp the IT help desk with calls as a large number of students are caught sharing copyrighted files.
Copysense can attempt to stop copyright infringement in several ways. It can stop all peer-to-peer traffic, just copyrighted content or target a specific range of Internet provider addresses ' like those used by students in their dorm rooms. That flexibility allows universities to tailor the software to their own needs, Ikezoye said.
The university is using Copysense only to block copyrighted content, but could use any of the application's features.
We're not trying to make policy
we're trying to allow universities to enforce policy
Ikezoye said.
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