May 2008 IT News
New Campus Cyberinfrastructure Director
Steve Corbató has been named as the new Director of Cyberinfrastructure Strategic Initiatives within OIT. Cyberinfrastructure (CI) encompasses shared and/or centrally facilitated IT resources to support research – including computational capabilities, data storage and curation, advanced networking, middleware, visualization, software, and manpower development. Dr. Corbató, who reports to the CIO, is charged with helping to ensure that the campus CI strategy is aligned with national, regional, and state opportunities and is addressing the research needs of the faculty and the campus research centers and institutes. A key part of this role will be working to execute the strategic objectives developed by the Campus Cyberinfrastructure Council.
Dr. Corbató most recently was the Associate Director of the Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) Institute on campus. From 2000 to 2006, he held several national networking leadership roles at Internet2. He oversaw the Abilene Network, which provided high-performance network connectivity to over 220 U.S. research universities, and also established FiberCo, a non-profit holding company for acquiring optical networking assets for higher education. While at the University of Washington, Seattle, Dr. Corbató worked on the development of the Pacific Northwest Gigapop regional network and the Washington State K-20 Network. He also has served as a board member of National LambdaRail, Inc. (NLR).
New Associate director for Campus IT Infrastructure
The Office of Information Technology and UHC Information Technology Services (ITS) are working together to increase efficiency and capitalize on their strengths by streamlining IT infrastructure areas.
Beginning May 5th, 2008, the IT infrastructure operations areas for both OIT and the Health Sciences will report to Jim Livingston. These include: Service Management, Network Operations, Information Security Operations, and Data Center. In some cases, groups will be merged. Phase II, implementation date to be determined, will add Backend Infrastructure (Server and Storage Management, Applicaton Support and Database Administration) to this group.
OIT and the Health Sciences infrastructure groups look forward to working as a team to ensure a robust campus network, excellent metrics, proactive security and superior service for our campus customers.
Liabilities of Peer to Peer file sharing
The University’s Office of Information Technology receives notices from media industry agencies such as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) when they see that file sharing of copyrighted media has occurred using the University of Utah campus networks.
The RIAA has sent several "notification(s) of copyright infringement claims" to the University requesting that we forward the notification to the alleged infringer. The letter describes the record companies' detailed claims against the person and offers an “early” settlement of those claims for a “substantially reduced dollar amount." The University’s Office of General Counsel has recommended that the Office of Information Technology forward the claims to the alleged infringer, not as an agent for the industry, but as a courtesy to the student or employee. The University may receive a subpoena or court order if the correspondence is not forwarded or if the alleged infringer does not respond to the notification. The Office of General Counsel states that no information about any campus user will be shared unless we receive a legally valid subpoena or court order.
If the campus user contacts the agency that is making the claim, there will be an opportunity to settle out of court. If not, the agency may take the user to court without any preliminary actions. Except for responding to a valid subpoena or court order, the University of Utah and the Office of Information Technology have no part in the litigation. The media agency is initiating action against the user as an individual.
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the RIAA has won one such case. The defendant was ordered to pay $222,000. However, that case may be tried again and could be overturned. Other industry agencies have not won major cases in court as of this time.
For more information on Peer to Peer file sharing and the University's position, see the Compliance Office’s Peer to Peer webpage: http://www.compliance.utah.edu/infosec/peer2peer.html .
For answers to common questions regarding these legal actions please visit https://www.p2plawsuits.com/ .
