Reflecting a considerable increase from last year, the University now receives an average of five to eight notifications of online copyright violation notices per week, according to Director of User and Technical Services Karen Warren. Warren speculates that last semester’s closing of WesHub, the on-campus peer-to-peer file-sharing network, was “probably the biggest contribution” to this year’s increase in online copyright violations.
On Jan. 28, Wesleyan’s Information Technology Services (ITS) sent out a campus-wide e-mail regarding the “confusion and misunderstanding about file sharing, copyright infringement, and ‘take down’ notices.” The e-mail provided a link to an ITS webpage that outlines procedure for first, second, and third warnings for students, staff, and faculty members, as well as a brief description of the Digital Media Copyright Act (DMCA), that criminalizes online copyright infringement and protects companies that could be at risk because of such behavior.
Violators of the DMCA are reported to ITS by the DMCA enforcing agencies, leaving ITS responsible for determining the consequences. According to ITS’s DMCA website, all violators will lose Internet access privileges. First time violators are required to allow the ITS Help Desk to remove the violating material before their Internet connection is restored. Second-time violators must meet with Warren, and third-time violators are brought before the Student Judicial Board.
According to Warren, the ITS webpage and the Jan. 28 e-mail are in line with DMCA policy, which states that the guidelines for dealing with offenders must be made public, and they must include “consequences that escalate.”
Although ITS serves the notices, Warren stressed that the department is not “doing any monitoring of any kind,” and is only acting as an intermediary between the DMCA agencies and users.
Paul Linton ’11, who has been working with ITS since October 2007, said that he believes the school’s response to the DMCA was “fair and appropriate.”
Warren said that she has not encountered many problems with the students who have been sent notices of violation.
“I haven’t had anybody blaming ITS,” she said.
Warren and Linton both agree that the issue of the DMCA within the university setting is a complex one.
“The technology is always ahead of the law,” Warren said.
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