Copyright Notification Procedures
Copyright violation notifications come from a variety of copyright holders in the form of DMCA violation complaint, Preservation Notice or Early Settlement Letter . The most common copyright complaints are sent by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), but are also received from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Entertainment Software Association (ESA), and Business Software Alliance (BSA).
Upon receipt of any copyright infringement notification, Computing and Communications (C&C) reviews the document as well as appropriate guidelines and associated information (e.g. The Copyright Law of the United States of America, Title 17 of the U.S. Code, Chapter 5, section 512c3). Network logs are examined to substantiate whether or not the Internet traffic in question originated from UCR. Contents of the traffic are not examined. Finally, the network address (the IP address) is analyzed to determine if it belongs to a campus or residence hall computer. All these actions are documented and stored for three years. The following links describe the processes implemented for handling of the types of copyright infringement notifications below:
DMCA Notifications
DMCA violation notifications to date have been the number one method used to identify potential network misuse. During the last school year UCR received 85 notices, up over 50% from the previous school year, but still down from a high of 143 violations in 2004-05.
- DMCA Notification process
Preservation and Early Settlement Notifications
The RIAA has begun a new copyright deterrence campaign, sending Preservation Letters and Early Settlement Letters. As a pre-court action, the RIAA is sending Preservation Letters requesting preservation of evidence and then offering Early Settlement opportunities to the accused copyright violator. Since August of this year, the RIAA has sent 503 pre-litigation settlement letters to 58 universities nationwide with almost 3,000 letters sent since February 2007. It is important to know, UCR does not provide any information to the RIAA without a subpoena.
- Preservation Notification process
- Early Settlement process