The latest in campus-wide ASU spam mail was sent Friday evening with the vague subject “Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) Student Disclosure.”
Though an e-mail definitely isn’t intrusive, I remember thinking that 7 p.m. on a Friday night was possibly the worst time to inform the student body of, well, anything except happy hour specials. Nevertheless, the e-mail must have been important if everyone got it.
It has to do with copyright infringement in the form of illegal file-sharing. There is a bulleted list of serious financial penalties you could incur on a per file basis for something like a song, movie or software file downloaded using “ASU’s computing resources.”
The e-mail was required by the U.S. Department of Education. Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) and asked all colleges to notify students that sharing any kind of copyright-protected files is not only against campus policy, but is also a federal crime per the U.S. Copyright Act.
The mass e-mail also mentioned that the University “routinely receives copyright infringement notices from the Recording Industry Association of America and other copyright holders.”
If ASU can track the infringement to an individual IP address, then that individual is going down.
While the general consensus behind the University actually busting everyone is hit-or-miss, you would think by now that stories of students having to attend educational courses would have persuaded people to do their less-than-kosher downloading on networks that aren’t being watched by so many acts, laws, agencies and departments.
The extra-bold can research how to hide their incriminating IP address so ASU won’t catch legal hassle from record companies — not that ASU would endorse that.
No one should have to go to one of those classes, and here are a couple of standout points in the ASU Computing Policy to keep you aware of the other ways you are potentially being monitored.
If you use your asu.edu e-mail account, everything you send or receive is technically Arizona Public Record and is searched, stored or deleted (but mostly stored) in any way the state sees fit.
Interesting note: the school does not have to inform you if they access your e-mail information when “the notification is impractical.”
Whenever you log in to your myASU page on either an ASU network or computer, the University has the right to keep a complete keystroke log of your session. That means it routinely stores what pages you visit, how long you were there, accounts you accessed and any data stored or transferred.
Because ASU owns the computers and pays for the network service, a lack of privacy rights is, regrettably, understandable.
The University will likely notify us about this important absence of our rights again next year, and the year after that, which is even more reason for someone to be tasteful with his or her activities on ASU computers, which is kind of just a no-brainer at this point.
Send weekend happy hour specials to swhitmir@asu.edu
