John, Kenyon class of '00, has been working with technology for several years now, spending his summers working for his father's company supporting their networked, office computers. Back in September, after he settled into his room in Hanna, he bought a new SCSI host adapter and CD-Rom drive, one that's capable of writing CDs. With this new hardware came an application called "Toons To Go." John didn't have time to do much with it until October reading days, but then he discovered that he not only could convert his old audio tapes into clear and crisp CDs, but he could save these same, cherished songs as .au files and share them with his friends downstairs.
John let them know that he had some titles, especially his Smashing Pumpkins album that Pete liked. He told Pete and some other students living in Hanna that he had the file "on the network" and where to get to it, but try as they might, no one knew enough about NT networking security to be able to download it. John really wanted to hear how his digital copy sounded on Pete's Bang and Olfssen stereo, so he kept trying other options.
Just before Thanksgiving break, John updated his version of Internet Explorer by downloading it from the Microsoft web site. During the upgrade process, he was given a chance to download PWS, or Personal Web Server. A simple click here and there and his computer was running it's own web server called john.kenyon.edu. It didn't take John long to figure out that Pete could test out the album if John simply put this file into the wwwroot directory on his personal computer. He did this, phoned Pete and boom....Pete was blasting out tunes from downstairs, and it sounded great (digital sound files are like that you know).
Off on Thanksgiving break went John and Pete and everyone else, including the Web Advisory Committee. John left his computer running on the outside chance that he would actually try to get some work done in between all the turkey and cranberry sauce. He could simply surf back to john.kenyon.edu on the web. To be safe (John didn't fall off the technology wagon last week, you know), John wrote down the IP address for his machine so he could get to it even if the College wouldn't approve his request for "domain name services."
Back in his dad's office, he sat down at the computer in the lobby and pointed the browser to 138.28.56.145, the IP address for his computer at Kenyon. He pointed to some files he needed and incidentially noticed the file, smashing_pumpkins.au so he clicked on it to see if anything would happen. Of course, we knew that it would (didn't we?) - and as soon as he turned up the speakers on the lobby computer, he was listening to his favorites. Nifty.....John went home.
Ever hear of a history file in a web browser? They all have them. They list the sites that were visited over the course of the last week to month depending on how the browser is set up. On Monday, November 30, Janet Lovelace (yes, an ancestor of Lady Ada Lovelace) stopped at the lobby computer for a brief surfing experience. After a while, she checked out the history file and found a reference to smashing_pumpkins.au, seemingly named for one of her favorite recording groups. One click and she joined the rapidly growing number of netizens who could enjoy the lastest hits at no charge. Janet wrote down the web address, 138.28.56.145.
Thanksgiving was great...but now we're back "On the Hill."
John was rushing around to finish two major papers in early December. He was more than thankful that his comps weren't until second semester. He was, however, annoyed by the slowness of his dorm computer. Since he wasn't running a web server log analyzer (what student would, anyway??), he didn't know that his server was at that very moment being visited by a browser running on a machine named legal.riaa.org. Nor did John know that Janet Lovelace had posted his IP address on an international newsgroup, rec.music.smashing-pumpkins. He didn't even know who Janet Lovelace was, but he was about to find out.
President O'Toole found out first, however, when the attorney from the Recording Industry Association of America (remember, RIAA.ORG??) phoned. "Stop distributing illegal copies IMMEDIATELY!" shouted an agitated barrister. President O'Toole rarely hears these words, but he pledges his institution's compliance and instantly begins calling some folks on campus. Guess who?