Virginia Tech officials are working to handle student copyright infringement taking place on online file-sharing networks while avoiding a ban of peer-to-peer protocols.
Jeff Kidd, spokesman for Tech’s Communication Network Services, said that his office receives between 60 and 200 complaints a month during the course of a regular school year.
“Some days you get three or four, other days you get 15 to 20,” Kidd says. “There’s not necessarily any specific pattern.”
Kidd said the complaints came from record companies, along with hired content tracking companies such as BayTSP.
As a result of both university policy and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Tech is responsible to pass on complaint notices to students.
“As an internet service providers, and as equipment operators, we are obliged to handle copyright infringements at the source,” Kidd said. Complaints to the CNS office are forwarded to the Office of Student Conduct.
Byron Hughes, said that first time offenders are often issued a formal warning along with an educational assignment, in the form a class titled “Assessing Decisions for A Positive Transition.”
Hughes, who handles copyright infringement cases for the Office of Student Conduct, said that 300 students completed the ADAPT class for the 2008-09 school year. Students taking the class are charged 50 dollars for administrative fees. Additional violations can lead to further discipline, including the loss of network privileges. Kidd said his office “doing them (students) a favor” in passing them to the Office of Student Conduct, rather than having copyright infringement handled through the legal system.
“This is handled in a pretty constructive manner,” Kidd said.
The infringing media comes in all forms, from music to movies and even audiobooks.
“It’s pretty much anything you would consider a creative work in a digital format,” Kidd noted many of the complaints come through the use of peer-to-peer software such as Gnutella and LimeWire. File uploads, rather than downloads, frequently catch the attention of authorities.
“That seems to be the ‘gotcha’ that trips most people,” Kidd said. Hughes said many peer to peer software programs can scan a user’s computer for additional files to upload.
“More often than not they’re not aware the capability of these file sharing sites for uploading and downloading material,” Hughes said. The university also has pursued cases of copyright infringement done through student-owned wireless routers inside residence halls.
“Time and again we get students who get infringement notices from downloads done through their wireless routers,” Kidd said. “The deal is, if it traces to their ethernet, they’re responsible for it."
Despite the outside complaints of copyright infringement, Kidd said the university does not plan on prohibiting the use of peer-to-peer software.
“The university does not monitor content,” Kidd said. “The notices are a result of specific complaints.
Matt Brown is a sophomore business information technology major and treasurer of Free Culture at Tech, an open-source advocacy group. He said that Tech had “a very good approach” in dealing with peer-to-peer software.
“Some have banned file sharing protocols outright,” Brown said. “Instead they wait and see for a response from an organization. In all, they’re doing a good job.”
Kidd said while the university does not actively pursue cases, the university holds a “great concern for copyright infringement.”
“We have a healthy respect for copyright ownership,” Kidd said.