According to a Jan. 13 Security and Compliance report by the Office of Information Technology, a record number of Digital Millennium Copyright Act notifications have been received by the University due to illegal file-sharing activities using the Nomad Wireless network.
The DMCA, a digital copyright act enacted in 1998, creates a safe harbor for internet service providers, including University networks, against copyright liability by its users.
In order to qualify for DMCA safe harbor protection, ISPs and universities are required to respond to DMCA notifications from the copyright holder.
John Baines, the assistant director of Security and Compliance at OIT said the university receives DMCA notifications every day informing them that particular files are being shared illegally, along with the IP address, time, and name of the copyrighted work.
‘Our response is to try to identify the individual and then pass the matter over to Student Conduct for students and to Employee Relations for faculty and staff for follow-up,’ he said.
According to Paul Cousins, director of the Office of Student Conduct, students are being caught not for downloading content, but uploading the content unknowingly.
‘Students don’t realize that when you load up Limewire, it sets up your machine as a server. It gives other people access to your machine when they are looking for copyrighted material,’ Cousins said. ‘People are getting caught for distributing music.’
Cousins said the first step in the process is to verify the student removed the illegal content.
‘The first time we get a notification that a student might have violated copyright laws, we will send them a notice via email. If it’s a repeated problem, they must meet with us,’ he said.
Students who receive multiple violations risk losing access to the network, resulting in possible academic consequences.
‘If a student doesn’t get the message and act more maturely with their account, we’re going to shut down their account,’ Cousins said.
The University, however, does not release the identity of the student to the copyright holder, unless the copyright owner files a court order or subpoena for the information, according to Baines.
‘We do not respond to the copyright owner other than to tell them that we are handling the case according to university policy. If the copyright owner wishes to sue an alleged infringer the university is obliged to tell them the name of the individual potential infringer,’ Baines said. ‘We have to obey that by law.’
According to the fall 2008 Pack Parents Newsletter, between 2007 and 2008 there were 114 pre-litigation notices seeking information on individual associated with alleged infringement activities on campus, along with 143 federal lawsuits filed against students by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Illegal file-sharing is not only an academic risk to students, but also a financial one. Between spring 2007 and spring 2008, the cost to settle these violations approached one million dollars.
However, the RIAA has stopped filing lawsuits against individuals, ‘in light of new opportunities to deter copyright infringement.’
‘It appears that part of their [RIAA] new strategy is in prevention and education with universities,’ Cousins said.
According to the OIT Security and Compliance report, automation of the handling of Nomad notifications is planned for February 2010 as a priority in order to improve student awareness, decrease the effort needed to manually identify the student from an IP address using log data, and to better correct student behavior.
In addition, he said the University was going to continue efforts to prevent students from committing copyright infringement violations.
‘The University is not going to tolerate a situation where we risk getting sued. We are absolutely going to protect the integrity of our system,’ Cousins said.
