The UT is not happy with the - in part international - publicity that this affair has caused. Spokesperson Gerard van Emous: 'It is of course regrettable when your name is mentioned in one breath with illegal practices. But at the same time the UT is mentioned together with world-renowned universities because of the ultramodern network we have here. We do not like the one, but do like the other.'
The publicity started with a well-meant joint warning from the Centre for Information Services (CIV) and the Student Net Twente (SNT), the (legitimate) society of student-users of the campus network, which appeared prominently on the UT home page on Thursday 20 December. 'We would like everyone to realise that trading in illegal software, films, music etcetera cannot be tolerated', was the message of the SNT to its members. 'We cannot help you any more by the time people with court orders are at your door.'
The immediate reason for placing the SNT-warnings on the net were the recent raids, arrest and confiscations on campus. Within a few hours of placing it the message was being removed and banned to the CIV site at the request of the Communication Department. By then the harm had been done: a day later a regional television station and newspaper brought the news in full, in the weekend followed by the national media. In the days that followed even CNN branded the UT as the European hotbed of the illegal software trade. And two weeks ago a national newspaper quoted a student from Enschede: 'The FBI has found out that the Campusnet is the largest illegal software park in the world. But you can still get there indirectly.'
According to insiders it is true that because of its high quality and speed (100 megabit, full duplex, switched), the campusnet is highly attractive to people who, as a hobby or as professionals, break and distribute commercial software, audio-cds, films and dvds. In this there is a difference between the relatively innocent (but also illegal) 'home user' and the organised criminal, who will shape the cracked packages into new products, which he will bring onto theblack market in the highest possible quantities at a fraction of the normal selling price.
The police investigation on campus and in Utrecht is clearly aimed at dismantling a large-scale criminal network. The suspect UT-students are supposed to have lent themselves among other things for - through 'home work' on campus - readying cracked software, cds, dvds and films. Subsequently the ready documents will have been sent to the principals in Utrecht, after which - probably abroad - the pressing of the printrun followed. The copies found their way to customers on the black market under the name Crazybites.
When asked, seasoned campusnet users tell that recruiters from criminal organisations regularly approach students for example by way of the chatmedium Internet Relay Chat. They ask them to make their pcs available to channel illegal digital ware, on payment of soft- or hardware.
If the recruiter in the chatroom finds that he is dealing with a user of the popular UT-net, he will cast his nets. A number of offers a day, from recruiters all over the globe, is not exceptional.
A campus resident then has three possibilities: refuse, draw the recruiter out and publish the resulting chat-dialogue as a warning on the campusnet, or yield to the offer, with all the consequences.
More drastic measures to counteract abuse of the campusnet, cannot really be taken according to Van Emous. 'You would then have to check the content of the data traffic, which in 99 percent of the cases is fine. You should not want that. You cannot prevent that someone somewhere will abuse the room on the bandwidth.'
