Students continue to find themselves in trouble for running afoul of the Central Michigan University illegal download policy despite the large campus bandwidth limit.

As it stands now, CMU has a network quota in place to limit the amount of bandwidth students and other users can consume on a weekly basis.

The quota policy, available online, describes the rules concerning students' use of the Internet on campus networks.

"The network quota blocks access to all off-campus Internet resources to users who have exceeded their bandwidth utilization quotas," the policy states. "The network quota was developed to protect the academic and research functions of network at Central Michigan University."

As it stands now, the quota allows for 100 gigabytes of total Internet traffic or 20 gigabytes of outgoing traffic per week. While students can possibly exceed this limit legally by downloading and using bandwidth-intensive software such as Netflix or Skype, most students who find themselves without access to the network get in trouble over illegal downloading.

The policy states "Most users do not come anywhere close to this limit. Usually if they hit this limit, they are excessively downloading files or have their computer configured to serve out material."

When starting college at CMU, students are warned about illegal downloading and overuse of bandwidth.

“CMU does a really good job at using scare tactics when it comes to illegally downloading,” said Houghton Lake senior Evan Barber. “I remember it being drilled into my head at orientation that we would be expelled if we were caught downloading anything illegally.”

Even with the scare tactics, students continue to abuse Internet privileges, in some situations accidentally.

“I think long Skype conversations on a semi-regular basis with friends back home was largely to blame,” said Illnois graduate student Jake Szetela.

Szetela said he had some knowledge about the bandwidth limit but he thought it would not be reachable.

“I think a prior warning saying that the limit was being approached would be nice, that way the limit could be watched and managed,” Szetela said.

Meanwhile, when it comes to the issues of downloading, students are more than likely abusing their privileges knowingly.

“I was using a client called Steam, which is used for legally downloading video games, which takes a lot of bandwidth,” Barber said.

Barber said he was using a different program to download music, and after leaving it open overnight, he was banned.

“They denied my computer access from Internet. I couldn't even access my Blackboard or email without going on campus to the library computers," Barber said.

Ben Witt, Student Behavioral Administrator in the Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities, handles complaints of the entertainment industry concerning digital piracy.

“Complaints come to the university through groups such as the Recording Industry Association of America and various other representatives of media entities,” Witt said.

Witt is responsible for seeing that the students are aware of their actions and the penalty they could receive.

“That first complaint is forwarded to the person the IP address is registered to, and if complaints continue they receive an initial takedown notice,” Witt said.

Witt said the fine for violation of the Computer Abuse Policy is $150 and can reach up to $300 and include violators being placed on disciplinary probation. However, Witt stressed that CMU is always putting the rights of the students first.

“That is simply a university fine,” Witt said. “The media entities can still pursue legal action.”

Witt said it is students' responsibility to monitor programs such as LimeWire, FrostWire and BitTorrent.

“Ignorance of how a file-sharing program works is no excuse, the university must hold students accountable in order to be compliant with existing federal laws and prevent legal action against CMU as the network provider,” Witt said.