No doubt you have already heard about the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) new strategy for addressing copyright violation.  Following the guidelines of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) the RIAA sends college campuses letters with the Internet address, the title of the song, the artist, and the date and time the alleged copyright violation occurred. 

 

North Central College already acts on the DMCA notices it receives as a matter of College Policy, Acceptable Use of Information Technologies; see http://its.noctrl.edu/tech_ethics/acceptable_use.shtml. 

 

Recently, the College received its first legal notice of infringement of a sound recording from the RIAA, so it is an appropriate time to remind everyone about copyright law and peer-to-peer file sharing.  Peer-to-Peer file sharing enables users to share music, movies, video games, images, and other files with just the click of a mouse.  While file sharing is easy and convenient, there are also risks such as:

We are individually responsible for our activities on any computer that is connected to the North Central network.  If you use peer-to-peer file share programs (such as LimeWire, eDonkey, Gnutella, and Bit Torrent), you may be faced with criminal or civil liability as these programs can automatically transmit copyright protected media to the Internet.  And, just because you have legally purchased and downloaded music, etc., does not mean that it is legal to share it with someone else.   

 

Please note that file share software scans a computer system's hard drive and distributes files automatically to other computers with file share software and that programs may be sharing files when the software appears to be turned "off."

 

Recently, content owners have also pursued more aggressive legal strategies such as "pre-settlement letters" or copyright infringement cases in federal court, as is their right under the law.   Recent settlements have cost the user thousands of dollars for downloading just one song illegally. 

 

North Central believes in freedom with responsibility.  North Central College has a policy of not monitoring the network or the hard drives of computers connected to the network for content and does not generate DMCA notices.  However, the College will provide content owners with the identity of users if served with legal papers requiring the College to do so.