May 24, 2007
Colleges Charge Students Accused of Internet Piracy
Like most institutions that have received copyright-infringement notices from the entertainment industry, Stanford University has a fairly straightforward process for dealing with the complaints. Campus officials identify students accused of piracy, ask them to delete the offending material from their computers, and prepare to disconnect from the campus network anyone who does not quickly comply.
The process might sound simple enough, but in fact it can be time-consuming and surprisingly expensive. College technology officials say each complaint filed against a student under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act can end up costing their institutions anywhere from $50 to upwards of $100.
So starting this fall, Stanford students who get disconnected will help the university pay for its trouble. Stanford will charge first-time piracy suspects a $100 fee to get back on the campus network, and it will charge repeat offenders even stiffer fines.
Read the full Chronicle story.
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Charging students for policy violations or reconnection isn’t a new practice. There haven’t been many institutions doing this but there have been a handful over the past few years.
Although we did not specifically ask if the charges or policies were related to DMCA takedown notices, two years when we asked 224 institutions if they were charging students a fee “after being disconnected for violating the Acceptable Usage Policy (AUP), having system vulnerabilities, or any similar reason(s),” a handful (8%) replied “yes.” It was Question 55 in Section 6 of the 2005 ResNet Survey (http://resnetsymposium.org/surveys/2005resnetsurvey.htm). The University of Delaware also discussed their “No Excuses” program, a program that charges students “$70-$100,” at last year’s ResNet Symposium.
— Kevin Guidry May 24, 03:16 PM #