[Infowarrior] - Want to use Bittorrent on campus? Take the Quiz

[Richard Forno]

Want to Download? Take the Quiz

For all the high-tech tactics colleges have employed to slow or block  
students’ illegal file sharing activity, few have actually turned to  
methods used in the classroom to get the message across. A university  
in Missouri thinks it’s found the right solution, combining an age-old  
teacher’s tool with a dash of discipline.

Last academic year, Missouri University of Science and Technology, in  
Rolla, received some 200 Digital Millennium Copyright Act “takedown”  
notices from the recording industry, notifying the institution that  
users of its network had made copyrighted works available for  
download. This academic year — at a time when colleges across the  
country have been experiencing sudden spikes in copyright complaints —  
the university received eight. Karl F. Lutzen, a systems security  
analyst at the university, chalks it up to Missouri S&T’s unusual  
method of regulating students’ network usage: In order to download (or  
upload) files on any peer-to-peer network whatsoever, all on-campus  
users have to pass an online quiz on copyright infringement.

But not just once. Passing the test — with a perfect score — enables  
peer-to-peer access for six hours on the user’s on-campus registered  
machines, presumably enough time to download that (legal) song, TV  
show or e-book. The next time, the student, staff or faculty member  
has to go to the intranet Web page and take the randomized test again,  
for a maximum of eight uses per month (which, kind of like vacation  
days, can accrue to at most 20).

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http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/05/15/p2p