The New Freedom

Wednesday, March 21st, 2007...1:03 pm

A Meeting with Jim Stone, DMCA Enforcer

A few days ago I went to check my BU webmail and noticed I had received a letter titled “COPYRIGHT VIOLATION: PLEASE READ IMMEDIATELY TO AVOID DISCIPLINARY ACTION”. I didn’t have time to deal with it, closed the window and figured I’d deal with it once spring break was over. When I get back to school, though, I find I can’t log in to my email, can’t look at my financial status, can’t look at my course materials. This makes it essentially impossible to continue as a Boston University student. I went to the IT office to get it sorted out.

I give them my ID and account name, so the guy at the desk makes a call. I’m ushered into the messy office a man with slicked back gray hair, a police plaque on the wall and bottle of Johnny Walker Blue on his desk. There is a ten inch stack of papers with the blue RIAA logo on the top. The man is James H. Stone, Director, Consulting Services, High Technology Crime Investigator, and as he later claims, “DMCA Enforcer.” Sounds like a really crap superhero. His email is jim@bu.edu, which is where all of the copyright violation notices are automatically sent from. He doesn’t have an online profile like the rest of the BU staff so I can’t provide a picture (Edit!: See below).

I ask him if he’s a cop and he says no. The big police badge on the wall and the photographs of police officers all around make me think otherwise. Later, he gives me his card and the logo is the Boston University Police badge. Apparently he has shut down my account because this is the third time one of the “notifying agencies” has sent a complaint to the school about copyright violation. Doesn’t matter to him the the first two were for the exact same thing, sent exactly one minute apart, this is “strike three”. As a result, my BU account has been disabled. The most recent violation was for downloading a copy of Matlab. I am taking CS Linear Algebra course which has projects which require us to do a lot of programming in Matlab, although the school does not provide us with Matlab licenses. The notifying agency (The Business Software Alliance, Wikipedia link) does not provide any more information about the supposed infringement other than my IP/MAC addresses, the time it occurred and a unique “Incident ID” which they provide (197-937377, though I don’t know what that means. Have there been nearly a million violations?). After my first violation, I wrote an email back asking Jim how they nabbed me, as I use BitTorrent (a protocol which he didn’t know anything about), and I don’t see how they can acquire that information without using illegal tactics (which they have been known to do). I received a canned response brushing me off in reply. He denied having received this email, but I get him to search his inbox and find it. He could not provide me any more information about how they got me, though. Also, I was running PeerGuardian while downloading, which makes me even more suspicious (or just proves that PeerGuardian doesn’t work).

I spend about an hour with him. Initially, he does not like me. He says that most of the people that come into his office normally “cave”, which I suppose means apologize and promise never to do it again. I think it makes him mad that I don’t do that and he gets pretty defensive. When I disagree with the things he says, he calls me “brain-dead” and a “smart-ass”. He writes a note in my BU account file in case I ever have to get a lawyer, which prevents him from getting in trouble if my lawyer tries to use the argument that I wasn’t properly informed about the situation. In that note he calls me “arrogant” and mentions something about my non-compliance and my not comprehending the gravity of the situation. While essentially holding hostage my ability to function as a BU student, he makes me answer a series of questions and promise to never violate copyright law again. When I tell him I promise not to do it on the BU network, he calls me a smart-ass again. He maintains that he’s not the bad guy and that he’s just the messenger and he’s really on my side, but really he makes it very clear that he has no interest in helping me personally. The only justification he has is that if enough students get sued and have to drop out due because of insanely high costs (as has happened numerous times in the past few years), then the school has less money and his paycheck goes down. He mentions this multiple times. Throughout the interview, he maintains an attitude of “I’m just doing my job,” or “If I didn’t do it, somebody else would.” He’s clearly never considered the philosophy of not participating in evil things.

I ask if he’s ever heard of civil disobedience and he says he’s never thought about that before. I explain my position on Intellectual Property and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, that we are now living in a new age of free information and ideas, and that the system which he supports is just an archaic institution which attempts to destroy everything that is wonderful about our new age. He’s clearly never thought of it like that before. Throughout the conversation, he changes his position numerous times and shows that he doesn’t really know what is or isn’t legal under the DMCA (I make some references to Dmitry Sklyarov and he suddenly changes his view on reverse engineering and DRM). Out of curiosity, I ask him how he feels morally about what the RIAA and ilk are doing, and he just tells me that he only thinks that it’s stupid from a financial perspective and a pain in his ass (which seems to be the BU’s official policy on everything). I ask him what he thinks will happen in the next five years, as the nation wide legal spamming surely can’t continue this way. He tells me that they have to eventually stop with the lawsuits and that their answer will eventually be found in technology (I guess he means DRM). He seems shocked when I tell him I don’t have a problem with that. In fact, I’ve been saying that for years. If a company can write software that I can’t crack, then yeah, their strategy wins and I don’t have a choice but to pay up (look at the success of subscription-based services like Steam. I bought Half-Life 2 and I’d gladly buy it again). Using lobbyist influence to make file copying a federal offense and then suing tens of thousands of old ladies and college students for outrages prices is what I have the problem with.

He asks me how I like BU and I tell him that my courses are great but the people here are boring and don’t care about anything, and that I really don’t like the monolithic nature of the administration. He said that “you can’t spell bureaucracy without BU.” He tells me that I should become a lawyer. Eventually, he turns my account back on and we part on pretty good terms. He’s still a cop though.

I wish I took notes, there are some things I missed out. I’ll edit this post if they come back to me.
Edit!: I remembered he has a Facebook profile, complete with pictures. He has it so he can look at us. When you hear about people being caught for things they posted on facebook, he is responsible. A bit part of his job is looking at our facebook profiles and other online presences, and sometimes reading our emails (when he has “good reason”). Here he is holding a plastic sword.

I’ve been totally swamped with school and haven’t had time to work on any projects, but this has inspired me a little bit and hopefully I’ll polish off that Anti-RIAA filter in the next few days. Dashitlist was getting spam-botted, so I added a crude CAPTCHA to prevent that, although I think it’s still a little buggy and the database is a bit wonky now. Whoops.

Rich out.