ISHMAEL N. DARO
News Writer

The Men Who Stare at Goats is a 2009 film based on the Jon Ronson book of the same name. It involves psychics, or something.

I downloaded the film several weeks ago but never got around to watching it. It is the sort of film you download off a BitTorrent site and forget about. The film’s presence on my computer did not go unnoticed, however. On March 22, I received a stern email from Campus Safety notifying me of a copyright violation.

“To comply with this notice, all file sharing must cease immediately,” read the email. “Failure to do so could result in the loss of your (University of Saskatchewan) Network privileges and the de-registration of your computer.”

Such incidents are not rare. There were over a hundred copyright violations documented by Campus Safety in 2009 and there have already been 17 so far in 2010.

“Some people come here because it’s a fast network and they want to get their files quickly,” said Harold Shiffman of Campus Safety IT Investigations.

It is Shiffman’s responsibility to send out notices and, occasionally, to cut off students’ network privileges if they continue to knowingly violate the policy. Campus Safety does not monitor student computing habits and only cracks the whip in response to specific complaints by copyright holders. Therefore, there is likely far more file sharing on U of S networks than ever gets caught.

“It’s the same as parking at meters without paying or parking in a lot. You roll the dice and you might get away with it a few times, but then you get dinged with a ticket,” said Shiffman.

In my case, the complaint came from Starz Media, a large media company that, among other things, handles the animation for The Simpsons. In their complaint, they referenced the movie I had downloaded, the exact file name, my IP address and several other details.

Yet, it wasn’t the downloading that was the problem. Canadian copyright law allows for downloading and it is only uploading copyrighted materials that is against the law. I had unwittingly left my BitTorrent application running in the background and, after the movie had finished downloading, the file was shared with others.

BitTorrent is a file sharing protocol that allows people to download large files by breaking it into small bits and downloading from many different people simultaneously.

Shiffman says some copyright holders are more aggressive than others. Paramount, for example, is especially forceful in tracking copyright violators. According to Shiffman, Universal Studios was also aggressive but has recently sent fewer notifications to the university.

“I’m not sure what happened. Maybe they’ve slowed down or we’ve stopped sharing. Maybe Universal doesn’t make good movies anymore,” he joked.

Although Campus Safety does not respond directly to copyright holders, it is in the university’s interest to stop illegal file sharing on its network when it occurs.

“If it got out of hand, they are well within their right to subpeona us and then either they would want to have our user information — hand over who it is so they can sue them — or they could try to lobby to have the university sanctioned in some way.”

Students who may accidentally leave their file sharing applications running while at school need not be too worried. For all the cases of film and music companies sending notices to cease and desist, there are bound to be many more instances that are never caught.

Also, if students share files with something other than BitTorrent they can rest easy. Something like LimeWire, which allows users to disallow uploading, or simply emailing an mp3 file to a friend is not a problem.

“They’re always BitTorrent. They always tend to be,” said Shiffman.

To see a more complete record of IT incidents and investigations, click here.

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photo: Flickr