University won't release names to recording industry
Spokesman says KU will not be third party in legal cases
Maggie VanBuskirk
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007
The University is refusing to forward pre-litigation letters from the recording industry to it’s students on the grounds that doing so could be an invasion of student privacy.
Earlier this month, the Recording Industry Association of America sent 408 pre-litigation settlement letters to 23 universities. The University of Kansas will notify individual students by mail if it received a complaint connected to a student’s IP address. The University will not, however, forward students the RIAA pre-litigation letter, which gives them the opportunity to settle out of court.
Jenny Mehmedovic, coordinator for information and technology policy and planning, said under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the University has no obligation to forward the letters to students. It also will not release any identifying information without a court order or subpoena.
Mehmedovic said the University operates by an internal process of response when it receives a complaint. It sends the appropriate user a letter from the University notifying them of the problem.
In past years, the University operated a “three-strikes” policy, in which students were alotted three warnings about their illegal activity before getting their Internet privileges revoked. This fall, the University is enacting a zero tolerance policy, where students lose Internet access on the first notice of copyright infringement.
According to the safe harbor provision of the DMCA, Internet service providers like the University, are not to be held liable for customers’ online activity if they immediately remove or disable a user’s access to identified material in a copyright infringement complaint.
Todd Cohen, director of University Relations, said the first responsibility of the University is to protect the privacy of its network users and notify users of the problem and the rules.
“My understanding is that the University’s best practices view point is to protect its students and show compliance to the rules but not to act as a legal agent,” Cohen said.
—Edited by Ben Smith
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good for the university. the RIAA is way out of line with these "pre-litigation" letters which are nothing more than a scare tactic to get you to settle outside of court (saving them in court costs and sometimes costing you more than it would have to go to court, especially since KU's legal services for students would likely do it for free)
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