awww i got fined

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junior aspirin
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awww i got fined

Post by junior aspirin »

meh, i know there have been alot of these posts, but i didnt take it seriously. now i am, i just got fined £35 for using dc by ITS.

just to let you know they are serious about it, and its not just rumours floating around. i didnt even use dc that much. oh well was good while it lasted, and i supose i got my moneys worth, £35 isnt bad for the stuff i downloaded.

shame tho im gonna have to stayin till 1030 tonight so i can watch peep show, insead of dloading it later in the week :(
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cocodude
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Post by cocodude »

If I were one of you, I just wouldn't pay. There are so many arguments that can be used against ITS, mainly that they don't provide the service they quoted they would, and you've been paying a fiver a week for that.

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CrAzYfOoL
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Post by CrAzYfOoL »

to be honest you have so many arguements against the fine like coco said they are not providing the service they are supposed to. How did they communicate this fine to you? via email i take it?

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echelon
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Post by echelon »

ohhh yes.. I would most certainly agree.. I would resist that fine if I were u.. dont pay.. u have enough arguments against them.. remember at the beginning of the year the AUP did not include DC++ on its list.. u can argue among other things that u never signed to the new AUP (or never accepted/agreed to).. u got a lot of arguments.. I would not just pay £35 just because they say so.. give a bit of a fight as I reckon they lack the argumenst anyway!!
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Post by xyzzy »

DC++ is just an example in the AUP, they don't need to list every last file sharing program in existence to prohibit them.
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echelon
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Post by echelon »

the AUP is not the only argument tho.. but still the currenct AUP can not been seen as valid as users werent informed of the changes.. I dont see AUP as legally binding in that case!! As no users have accepted/agreed to it.. They all agreed to the old AUP, which is now terminated and therefore no longer valid.. Thus there is no valid AUP presently 8)
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Post by CrAzYfOoL »

to be fair the whole ITS AUP needs to be properly wirtten and everything stated, at the moment its just a adaptation of a previous version from last year and its some what vague on certain points. I think that they should clarify what they mean and publish it .

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wingman
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Post by wingman »

I believe as contractual arguement flows it would be questionable, as the EULA so to speak is not easy to read and explicit.
junior aspirin
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Post by junior aspirin »

i dont realy see how i have any choice. if i dont pay they will just cut me off i assume, although i have had no formal letter as of yet. the way i see it is there is only one of me, and i need the service they offer to do my course easily.

the way it happened was all of a sudden. i went to a lecture at 12, and when i came back i was cut off. so i foned up ITS and was told i had got my ports blocked to to a breach of the 'accepted use policy', and was put through to another department to arange a meeting with Mary Visser, deputy director of ITS.

so i went, was i nice treck, its right in the middle of westwood, and i like in jack martin, took me 30 mins to find the place. (its near costcutter in the centre of a horseshoe arngement of buildings, if anyone else gets invited). basicly i sortof had a plan, i thought if i act dumb and just yes and i didnt realise it was such a problem, i may get a waring and thats it. so she goes through all this speel that i have no need of knowing, like how the network was once controlled by an extenal opperater and now they have just moved it in house blah blah. she went on to say they have been getting letters from the music and film industrys, but thats just standard i suppose, i bet the crummy music industry sends out these generic mails to everywhere. the way i see it the music/software/movies i got were ones i would not have bought anyway-im a poor student, but i will by cd;s if i realy like the artist. besides i own nearly all the music on my pc anyway.
she also told me that thes p2p programs are eating up the bandwidth, which i also see the reasoning, but then she told me something wrong. she went on to say the dc was using up the extenal bandwidth. i was so close to telling here she was wrong-its mainly internal of which the bandwidth would be very large, but thought i would keap on her good side.

so after a nice 10min chat, i sed i wouldnd use any filesharing programs, and thought that was it, but nooo. she just casualy goes, 'oh you are aware there will be a fine for this' when i asked she did not know exactly how much, but seid in the reagion of £35. i will find out in a letter. i should have said something before i left, but i was unprepared, and i need facts in order to confront them.

so what i can make out from this is that they are probably getting letters from the music industry and they have to be seen to be doing something about it or the university itself could get fined. i can also see the point od cracking down on bittorrent and kazza etc as it does use the bandwidth greadyly. but dc is differnt. she seemed intent on blaming dc, but dc is internal, unless you download from off campus. also i am beginning to agree with you about this so called policy. no-one has seen a formal policy, just a vague email sent out telling you that the policy was changing. an isp cannot change their agreement without fomaly telling you, this is the same. also nowhere did it say you would be fined if you were found to breach the contract.

oh and also do you know how they tell you why your internet has been cut? the clever people send u an email. how to i read my email without internet can i ask!

anyway that sums it up. posibly my longest forum post ever, but hey im pissed off, its like over a weeks worth of food an booze.....
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Post by echelon »

well I would be very pissed off as well.. I would combat them and retaliate.. tell them that if they plan to fine u then u would also like compensation for the may months without proper internet.. so that should be 8*5 = 40.. so then they owe u £5..
junior aspirin
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Post by junior aspirin »

also just been thinking. they could be using this to make money. since contol has now been moved in house, they maybe in need of some extra cash. even if they just fined 20 people thats £700. if you think about it, if they dont want us to use these programs why did they unblock the ports?
yoinkster
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Post by yoinkster »

700squid to them is like what a cent is to bill gates in fairness.
i dont think they are going broke and i dont think they are interested in attempting to make money off students.
what they are trying to do is make an example of you and hopefully with everyone's help here we will actually end up teaching them a valuable lesson which goes something along the runs of "learn how to run a business properly you fucking cunts"
issuing a fine for a first offence is an absolute disgrace, the amount of times i got threatened with fines and got told it was my last warning is laughable. you can easily tell that the people in house running it are worse than the outside operators and they were without shadow of a doubt on the AOL level so god knows where the service stands now. Saying someone is worse than AOL is akin to fucking someones mum and then killing her in front of the child.
another thing that strikes me is that I actually dont believe ITS are organised well enough to realise that you havent paid your fine if you dont pay it. I imagine their office to be some sort of paper mountain with a small box humming and someone in there going "i can hear the fan, everything must be running smoothly"
good luck and remember, dont do *anything* without telling us whats going on so we can offer you bits of advice :D
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Post by echelon »

yoinkster is right in many ways.. (I probably would have put it slightly differently.. but hey every man his taste :P)

I definetly agree that u should not pay the fine, or that u should fight them back.. Dont go down without a fight.. thats my main point..

And concerning ITS using the fines as a money machine... as yoinkster said its doubtful.. an interesting idea, but if they were truly doing that.. then they wouldnt just do 20 ppl... as yoinkster said £700 is not really much for them..
wingman
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Post by wingman »

Make sure you get your name in the Boar first, we need to organise some PR stunt over ITS recent crapness, in particular the speed restrictions on plan HTTP traffic which is just plain unnecessary.
junior aspirin
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Post by junior aspirin »

OK i have received my letter in the post today. below is a copy of it, with unimportant stuff left out.

Dear Mr Aspirin

i write with reference to the meeting you had recently .... regarding the use of p2p filesharing software........ this is a breach of the Acceptable Use Policy which constitutes an offence under the University Disciplinary Regulations (Minor Offences) for which you are being fined £35.

As you admitted to your actions you cannot appeal against the decision. you can however, appeal in mitigation of penalty. any such appeal must be addressed in writing to the Registrar and should briefly set out the grounds upon which the appeal is made and submitted within 10 day of this letter [1st dec]. should you wish to seek advice about an appeal, please contact either the Senior Tutor or the Students' Union Advice and Welfare Service.

the procedure for such an appeal can be found ........ under www.warwick.ac.uk/info/calendar . in the meantime, you should pay the sum of £35 to the undergraduate student finance office at your earliest convenience.

your sincerely
Rosemary Gilmore
Director, IT Services




so what do you think i should do? obviously i don't want to pay the fine. i could write an appeal, but i'm crap at those sorta things, and where will i find the registrar? i don't even know where the Undergraduate Finance Office is, so even paying the fine would be difficult at the moment. also the web address they provided just redirects to the homepage, so no info there.

its not just me who has had this action taken against them, my mate in the came corridor also had the same, although he had his meeting today, so do not know who he faired, but i'm guessing its going to be the same.

[edited for spelling]
Last edited by junior aspirin on Tue Nov 22, 2005 5:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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