[Web4lib] websites who sell access to licenced material illegally

[Bouchard, Kerry]

    We ran into this problem when we were just using institutional ID
numbers for authentication, so we switched to LDAP -- most of our users
now get access to library online resources with the same username and
password they use to log on to our campus network.  (We still have a few
"friend of the library" type accounts maintained in our circulation
system, which we could turn off if they were abused.)  A user who
sold/gave away their network username and password on a web site would:
1) Be enabling access to their network files, academic transcripts, and
other confidential data, not just access to Library resources, and 2) Be
in violation of the university's policy about not sharing network
accounts.  So if a user was foolish enough to ignore 1), we would have a
basis to ask our I.T. department to shut down their network account
based on the policy.

        -Kerry

Kerry Bouchard
Director of Library Systems, Mary Couts Burnett Library
Texas Christian University
(817) 257-6809

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of clay
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007 8:46 AM
To: web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: [Web4lib] websites who sell access to licenced material
illegally

on Thursday, we got an email/ticket from a librarian at a different 
university  that mentioned that they saw our URL on a website.  They 
mentioned that the website looked like it could be one of those sites 
where they essentially gave out username/password combos for people to 
use to access Library online resources.  In the past, we have seen those

pop up, and before, when we managed our own list, were able to simply go

in and remove the username that was the culprit.  Now, since we don't 
manage the list, it is a different problem ... one we pretty much cannot

police.  This site is in Chinese (simplified) and google translator was 
able to read it for me.  What I see there appears to be someone selling 
a NetID/NetPassword combination for people to use to get to our journals

and databases.  This leads to potential licensing agreement violations, 
should the vendors/publishers find out about it.
 
Are any other Libraries out there experiencing things like this 
happening, as well?  If so, what are you doing about it?

Below is the "google Translated" version.

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbbs.proxycn.com%2Fi
ndex.php&langpair=zh-CN%7Cen&hl=en&safe=off&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Fla
nguage_tools 
<http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbbs.proxycn.com%2F
index.php&langpair=zh-CN%7Cen&hl=en&safe=off&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Fl
anguage_tools>

Thanks
Clay
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