Privacy advocates are urging education leaders to protect computer users’ rights to privacy as the entertainment industry pleads with college and university presidents to protect copyrighted material from illegal downloading and usage.
In October, the entertainment industry suggested universities implement programs that can match specific users to IP addresses and identify what kinds of files they are exchanging.
But in a letter to college and university presidents earlier this month, the Electronic Privacy Information Center said this kind of scrutiny can violate individual rights and have “a chilling effect on the marketplace of ideas.”
Chris Hoofnagle, legislative council for EPIC, said the organization is not opposed to bandwidth management programs like the one Northwestern uses, but people need to be careful when using any kind of technology to monitor activity.
He said various software appliances offer one-click identification for a user of a particular computer address.
“The problem is that monitoring is always on a slippery slope,” Hoofnagle said. “Once there is an infrastructure for monitoring, it could be used for secondary purposes.”
These secondary purposes could include anything from technology staffers checking out people’s Web habits for fun to keeping tabs on people exchanging unpopular political ideas, Hoofnagle said.
EPIC consulted many institutions of higher learning before drafting its letter, and Hoofnagle said a common attitude among educators emerged.
“One consistent theme was that it was inappropriate to use technology to shape young peoples’ behavior,” said Hoofnagle, who added that educators want to shape behavior through education rather than control.
Should these educational methods fail, schools should institute bandwidth monitoring, Hoofnagle said.
This is the strategy NU adopted to keep its network operational. Information Technology allocates certain amounts of bandwidth to specific types of applications, so no one type of file transfer can take over all the network space. The procedure does not involve monitoring individuals’ activities in any way, said Tom Board, director of technology support services.
“The word monitoring is too strong,” he said. “We are not doing monitoring, we’re doing management. We’re not looking inside (people’s activities), we’re just looking at the programs.”
To address possible abuse of copyrighted materials, NU relies on outside sources to give notification of violations and identify offending IP addresses.
When a copyright holder contacts NUIT about a violation, they usually tell officials what address is exchanging the illegal material, Board said.
Then NUIT simply shuts down the corresponding port and waits for the user to contact them about the problem with service. The individual is then required to remove the offensive material or software from the computer’s hard drive.
This strategy helps NU steer clear of any sticky situations involving software that monitors individuals, but students say having their ports shut down is inconvenient. Often students do not understand the reason their port is not working and will use a friend or roommate’s connection, getting them disconnected as well.
Weinberg freshman Ben Eichorst found himself in that situation earlier this year when his neighbor was caught downloading concert videos and used other ports, which were subsequently shut down.
“Catching people by name would be a much more valid way of trying to catch people that are doing things that are illegal,” Eichorst said.
But upon considering security and privacy concerns of close monitoring that would allow NUIT officials to identify users of specific IP addresses, Eichorst said NUIT’s strategy was the lesser of two evils.
Board said simply managing bandwidth is the best solution and that monitoring of individuals’ online activities is not something he sees on the horizon for NU.
“(Students) are not little kids, he said. “We’re not monitoring who’s doing what.”
