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Educating Users/Students on Reducing Exposure to the RIAA
An anonymous reader asks: "I work for a medium-sized university (25K students), and have been asked to come up with ideas on how to reduce our exposure to the RIAA. Our head of IT gets 50 to 100 emails from the RIAA every week, complaining about IP addresses where P2P applications offer copyrighted songs for download. We don't want to firewall off P2P applications completely, we just want to get the RIAA off our backs. How do other university IT departments educate students to stop attracting the RIAA's attention? Thanks for any war stories you might be able to share !"
At my university, they posted signs in all the dorms explaining how to turn off uploading in Kazaa, and put up a web page with a list of common P2P apps and how to disable sharing. This was mostly done to address an upstream bandwidth problem, but I would imagine it would have the result you want as well.
My server
The problem is, in the real world, you can't just ignore correspondence. Particularly correspondence from lawyers.
Don't burn any courier-delivered registered mail unopened, either. It sucks what can result from that.
- The name, address, and electronic signature of the complaining party [512(c)(3)(A)(i)]
- The infringing materials and their Internet location [512(c)(3)(A)(ii-iii)]
- Sufficient information to identify the copyrighted works [512(c)(3)(A)(iv)]
- A statement by the owner that it has a good faith belief that there is no legal basis for the use of the materials complained of [512(c)(3)(A)(v)]
- A statement of the accuracy of the notice and, under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on the behalf of the owner. [512(c)(3)(A)(vi)]
It may well be that the letters are not fully compliant. Usually they don't sign these because the complainant isn't the RIAA. See what happens if you respond asking for a compliant letter.It may be that they do include a signature, in which case you're up the creek. Also it is essential that you are compliant with te provisions since two can play at that game.
In case you completely forgot, this is exactly what those 4 college students were charged with doing - at $97,000,000,000 each. Great advice buddy!
Are digital signatures legally binding?
In those states where digital signatures are not yet binding, it soon will be. This page lists the legal status of digital signatures in all sorts of jurisdictions. On the page, pull down the menu and select "United States [All States]".
And you still have no way to guarantee delivery
Perhaps SMTP does not guarantee delivery, but the instant message protocols already do. Future instant message protocols will allow for cryptographically signed communication.
Will I retire or break 10K?
ISPs are still legally required to respond to DMCA take down notices. ISPs are not P2P companies. The emails that the universities (and corporations) are getting are DMCA take down notices.
I don't understand why anyone would give advice to ignore the law. I don't think the university wants to get sued for violating the DMCA. Educate your users, throttle back P2P bandwidth, and respond to DMCA notices as directed by the law. Tell your students that legal uses of P2P will be allowed, but copyright infringers are own their own.
My employer issued a company wide statement about P2P use describing our policies (don't violate copyright) and people that are caught infringing now get a meeting with HR and their boss. I know that other large corporations have similar policies. I think we block all p2p ports, but if your students are responsible enough to stick to legitimate uses, this may not be necessary.