"... the rest of the story"

Last Friday I opened up my computer at school and was automatically connected to the ASU network via Wi-Fi at a specific IP address. When I opened the computer on Tuesday, I was unfortunate enough to be connected to the very same IP address. On Monday, someone else connected to this IP address on the ASU network, but their computer managed to escape having it's MAC address logged. This person uploaded True Blood, Season 2, Episode 12 via Bit Torrent.

HBO employs a muscle team (read: computer nerds) to track these Bit Torrent files and report those they find to be uploading or downloading said files. ASU receives threats of lawsuits and the like from HBO because the aforementioned muscle team has traced these file transactions to the ASU campus. As a result of these lawsuit threats, ASU has formed an IT "Security Team," whose main job is to investigate claims made by companies regarding copyright infringement (among other things.)

This security team has no main phone number and no main office. They also, apparently, do not have a method of communicating within their own department.

On Tuesday, a member of the Security Team received a complaint from HBO's muscle team that an episode of True Blood had been seeded to Bit Torrent from a campus IP address on Monday. The ASU Security Team member then did a quick search of computers who accessed the specific IP address on Monday. When they found no computer had reportedly accessed the IP address on Monday, they decided that the single computer which had access on both Friday and Tuesday must then also be the same computer who accessed on Monday.

This computer was mine.



As Paul Harvey would say, "And now you know..."