Fee imposed to reconnect to Internet
On-campus students whose computers are disconnected due to illegally downloading music will now have to pay a fee to have their computer reconnected.
After a complete network overhaul in the fall, students living in on-campus housing were all given a routed IP address, said Bob Bayn, Information Technology security team coordinator.
When a take-down notice is received by the university saying the student has music illegally available to others, the student’s IP address is changed to non-routed, Bayn said. The students are then allowed access to only the USU network, nothing else.
Bayn said the department and administrators have been working on a fee for students who must then reconnect to a routed IP address. This will be a $50 fee each time the student must be reconnected to the network, Bayn said.
“The administration agreed to support re-imposing the $50 reconnect fee,” Bayn said.
The fee is not a fine, Bayn stressed, simply the money for the time it takes to process the complaint, let the student know and follow up afterward.
As this reconnect fee had not been in effect for some time, Bayn said a notice was sent out finals week of last semester to let students know about the change. It went into affect Jan. 1, and since then, Bayn said he has had to use the fee once.
“I know of a few people who when the notice came out deleted Limewire and such, just in case,” said Brittney Lamb, a freshman in Speech, Language Pathology. Lamb said she feels the fee is justified because if people are doing something illegal they should be punished and the university watching it is good. In November, USU received an advanced notice of an early settlement for a student who had illegally downloaded music. Bayn said neither he nor the student had heard any more about the case. The notice was for one song, and the amount charged was $3,000.
The student is still in limbo, Bayn said. He said he doesn’t know if they have forgotten about the student or if the process takes a while, but until the recording industry responds, he and the student will wait, Bayn said.
-alison.baugh@aggiemail.usu.edu