University Wire
02-23-1998
(Harvard Crimson) (U-WIRE) CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Recent controversy over the case of one student's use of his FAS Web space has raised serious questions as to the boundary between commercial use of the Harvard network and using the network to distribute original software to the Internet community without charge.
Public statistics for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Web server indicate that downloads from the web page of one student-- Garrick Lau '98--have been responsible for roughly 12 percent of all data transmitted from the server over the past 14 months.
These downloads, mostly of free software produced by a company Lau founded, may constitute a violation of an FAS policy which prohibits any commercial use of Harvard's computers or networks.
Rick Osterberg '96, coordinator of residential computing support for FAS Computer Services, explains that "under no circumstances" are students permitted to use their FAS accounts to host Web pages for business.
But Lau has a different point of view.
"I'm totally aware of the FAS policies, and I do not--to the best of my knowledge--violate them," he says.
Adding Up
Taken together, the downloads amount to more than 70 gigabytes of data--approximately one out of every eight bits of information transmitted from the web server at www.fas.harvard.edu, which supports the FAS Web site, the College Web site, departmental homepages and all student home pages.
Most of the 70 gigabytes consists of multiple downloads of 12 computer programs designed by Omnicron Technologies Corporation, which is based in Calgary, Canada. Lau, an economics concentrator in Cabot House and Calgary native, is Omnicron's chief executive officer.
Omnicron was born as a creative project between Lau and friends during his first year at Harvard. The group's first project was a flop, but their second--a "Web server" program called OmniHTTPd, hitched itself to the bandwagon of the World Wide Web in late 1995 and surged in popularity on the rapidly growing Internet.
"It was an instant success," remembers Lau. "I did all the programming here. I coded a lot in high school, so I basically had my coding pretty much down," he says.
OmniHTTPd enables a computer connected to the Internet to publish pages on the World Wide Web. Since its first incarnation in November 1995, it has gone through several "alpha" and "beta" revisions which were made available to the Internet community on Lau's Harvard Web page.
The most popular version, "ohttpd101.exe," is just under a megabyte in size and was downloaded over 18,000 times from June 1997 to January 1998, according to public FAS Web server statistics.
Last year, many satisfied users of OmniHTTPd sent e-mail messages to FAS Computer Services, assuming that Harvard itself had produced the software. According to Lau, FAS Computer Services was happy to forward the notes of kudos along to him.
Breaking the Rules?
But despite Omnicron's popularity, serious questions remain as to whether its distribution practices violate Harvard's basic rules.
According to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services' written policy, "use of Harvard's computers and networks for commercial purposes without authorization is prohibited."
Each of the more than 15,000 FAS account holders is given 6.5 megabytes of space to hold e-mail messages and store information for publication on the World Wide Web.
Until this month, Lau published Omnicron's home page from his FAS account, using Harvard's network as a worldwide distribution center for Omnicron's software. But he says he never approached FAS Computer Services to get their approval because he assumed officials would notice the sheer volume of his traffic and contact him if they had any concerns.
"The reason why we never bothered approaching FAS is just that it's so blatantly obvious," he says. "It's so blatantly obvious, we didn't think we were in violation, and we still don't think so."
Lau argues that Omnicron's policy of distributing software without charge--the idea of "freeware"--exempted it from any rules against commercial activity.
"We don't charge anything for it, and we're losing money," he says.
But FAS Computer Services insists that even freeware programs are subject to the FAS rules.
"Even if it's strictly freeware, if it's linked to any commercial venture, it is against policy," Osterberg wrote in an e-mail message to The Crimson last week.
Under this interpretation, Lau may be breaking the rules if Harvard decides that Omnicron is a commercial venture. Currently, its status is undefined.
Although Omnicron is a registered corporation in Calgary, Canada, and has considered both a public offering of stock and selling its business to another company, Lau maintains that Omnicron is not a commercial enterprise.
"I know that it could be questionable, because [Omnicron's software] was so popular," says Lau. "A lot of people think popularity equals commerciality."
Lau says he interprets the FAS policy to prohibit commercial transactions over the network, but not the exchange of freeware.
"That's why we don't sell our software," he says. "We know that's bad, and it's bad for the company, because it ruins our integrity."
Lau says Omnicron only incorporated after several users discovered a security bug in an early release of OmniHTTPd, prompting concerns that users might file suit against Lau if the software damaged their computers. After incorporation, a disgruntled user could only sue the company rather than its members.
"Just because I've incorporated to protect myself doesn't mean [Omnicron] is commercial," Lau says.
Matters Have Changed
But after almost three years of laissez-faire treatment from FAS Computer Services, Omnicron's situation is changing.
Although Frank Steen, director of FAS Computer Services, would not say if Harvard has taken any disciplinary action against Lau, over the past weeks, Lau says Omnicron has had to shift its home page from the FAS server to a server in Calgary, Canada--www.omnicron.ab.ca.
As late as February 16, the latest versions of Omnicron's software were still available for download on the FAS server. Lau has since deleted these files, and visitors to the former Omnicron site are now redirected to the Canadian server.
"It's all off now," Lau says. "It's completely moved to avoid further problems with FAS."
A note on the new Omnicron Web site, dated February 19, states that "due to pressures from Harvard University, Omnicron must immediately relocate its Web pages."
The note also apologizes for the slowdown in access speed, or "bandwidth," compared to the previous performance running on Harvard's state-of-the-art servers.
"Our initial plan was to resolve the bandwidth issue before moving the Web site but matters have now changed," it reads.
Harry R. Lewis '68, dean of the College and McKay Professor of Computer Science, declined to comment on Omnicron's statement that Harvard put "pressure" on the company to move files off the Harvard server, citing the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act and University policy.
However, Lau says Cabot House senior tutor Robert Neugeboren has now been called into an investigation at Harvard. Neugeboren was not available for comment yesterday.
Questions remain as to why Lau's activities--if they in fact constitute a policy violation--have been ignored or tolerated for so long.
But even more fundamental is the question of whether or not Lau's activities are indeed a commercial enterprise.
Lee Valentine '93, an independent computer consultant who has aided Harvard with computer projects in the past, says "[Garrick Lau] does seem to have had his business Web site at Harvard at one point."
In 10 out of the past 14 months--the only months for which statistics are available--Lau's home page has been the most heavily trafficked site on the www.fas.harvard.edu server in terms of the volume of data transmitted.
Lau's site has also been among the top three personal Web sites in terms of the number of "hits"--individual requests for files on a Web server--since June 1997.
"When you see a large number of hits, and a large amount of downloads, that's a warning sign," Valentine says.
Todd A. Bangerter '98, whose Web site was the most heavily trafficked on the FAS server from September to November 1997, says he thought it would be clear to an observer of the public FAS server statistics that Lau was running a business.
"You could just see the sheer amount of hits and data that his account is transferring," Bangerter says.
On average, five gigabytes of data were downloaded from Lau's account each month.
Most commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs) do not offer pricing plans for such a large amount of data transfer.
Conxion, a major ISP based in San Jose, Calif., does offer such a plan and charges $675 per month for five gigabytes of volume, according to Lynn Ann Baker Brown, a senior sales and marketing support associate at the company.
At those rates, if Omnicron's files had been hosted on a private Web server, the bill for the past 14 months would have come to $9,450.
Michael W. Itagaki '96-'97, winner of the Harvard Student Agencies "Let's Grow" Entrepreneurship Contest for a Web Crawler he developed, says he "couldn't even imagine" that a student could account for 12 percent of data transfers off the FAS server. He says that this amount of space "exceeds the computing capacity of many moderately sized companies."
But Lau is not alone. Several other student Web sites at Harvard consume a significant chunk of network resources.
Bom S. Kim '00, a Winthrop House resident, has a homepage that includes multimedia audio and high-resolution image files. In January, his Web site received almost 128,000 "hits" and was responsible for 10.3 percent of the volume of data transmitted from the FAS web server--second only to Lau, who was responsible for 15.9 percent of data transmission that month.
By the Book
Although Lau believes he has adhered to FAS policies, other student entrepreneurs have chosen to go to great lengths to avoid any hint of using University computing resources for commercial ventures.
D. Brittain Bolen '00, who sells a Macintosh shareware version of a popular Windows 95 computer game, says he talked with Harvard Arts and Science Computer Services (HASCS) about Harvard's business computing policy before moving his business to a Web address with a Houston, Tex., Internet service provider.
"I checked up on it extensively at the beginning of the year with [HASCS official] David Sobel," Bolen says.
According to Bolen, Sobel said he would not be prosecuted for using the Harvard network to communicate with his Houston accounts using Telnet, but that using the Harvard server as a distribution point for his software would not be acceptable.
Bolen says HASCS also allows him to maintains two links to his business account in Houston from his Harvard Web site.
The Mather resident explains that he used the Harvard accounts for business purposes when he was first starting the business--he earned a mere $60 in his first month and now nets over $1,200 per month.
"I switched [off the Harvard Web server] voluntarily for professionalism purposes," he explains, adding he believes that Harvard's policy is reasonable.
Amar K. Goel '98, the founder of an Internet supplier of custom golf equipment that generates a revenue of $25,000 per month, agreed that the regulations were necessary.
"Harvard is spending money to keep the servers up for students and things related to the College. My business is not an activity that should be subsidized by the College. It's not intended for student benefit and it's not helping students or providing a service for any student," he says.
Goel, who is also a former Crimson executive, adds that his company never used Harvard as an Internet service provider and that he believes it would be inappropriate for any business to do so.
An Unnecessary Burden?
Other student entrepreneurs took a more balanced view, arguing that the effects of the regulations are mixed.
Itagaki says the administration's business computing policy is unnecessarily burdensome for students.
"There are a lot of students who have good ideas here and I think the University should try to support those ideas," he says. "If they use a couple of bucks worth of network time or processor time, I think that's educational."
Although Itagaki stresses that the administration needs to protect University resources to make sure they are not abused, he argues that the University's computing policy could be stifling.
"The policy creates an aura of concern--or perhaps a little bit of fear--on the part of people who are trying to take the initiative," he says.
Itagaki says he has never used Harvard's computing resources in any of his business endeavors. He has been selling educational organic chemistry software over the Internet for three years from a business registered in Hawaii.
"I was very careful to make sure that I did not use any of Harvard's resources in my businesses," he says.
This required him to take out a personal e-mail account independent of the Harvard network.
"I paid for a third-party Internet provider just so I could check my account. I didn't use Harvard's ethernet network. I didn't even use the Harvard computers to check my e-mail," he says.
Joseph H. Osnoss '00, another student honored in the HSA contest, says the University faces a "paradoxical" situation in deciding whether to allow student entrepreneurs to use computing resources.
He argues that students have a certain amount of space on the Harvard servers which they should be able to use however they wish.
"I suppose every student has a certain quota of disk space for e-mail and course work. On the one hand, students should be able to choose how to use allocated space but, on the other hand, Harvard is an academic setting and its computing resources should be used for academic purposes," he says.
Osnoss also argues that frivolous non-commercial activities can be even more burdensome to Harvard's computing resources than commercial activity. Sites with MPEG digital movies or RealAudio sound files have no inherent value, he says, and generate more hits than many business operations.
He also says Harvard's strict policy on commercial use of the network singles out entrepreneurs for unfavorable treatment.
"Harvard really takes pride in students' accomplishments in many different disciplines. If a student has a special interest in entrepreneurship, that's still an interest that a student has and it is no less worthy of endorsement by the University than any other interest."
Moving Forward
Lau says he believes the controversy over his Web site will spark efforts to clarify FAS regulations on uses of its network.
"FAS policy is probably going to be amended after this incident," he says. "It's a very, very gray area."
In the meanwhile, he encourages Harvard students to try out his software for free.
"I don't think it's a complete package, but I think it's pretty cool to use," he says.
(c) Harvard Crimson via U-Wire
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