UW - Milwaukee follows UW - Madison’s Lead, Will Not Forward RIAA Letters
The University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee sent the email reproduced below to all students, faculty, and staff this morning. Like the letter sent by UW - Madison a few weeks ago, it indicates that the university won’t forward letters it receives offering to “settle” file sharing cases brought by the recording industry, though it will comply with a lawful subpoena.
SUBJECT: Illegal File Sharing at UWM
This announcement is being sent to all known UWM faculty, staff and student e-mail addresses.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has recently increased its threat of lawsuits against students and others who engage in illegal digital file sharing. This is in response to perceived violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which specifically addresses copyright infringement of digital materials such as music, movies and software.
As you may know from recent press reports, the RIAA is now targeting individuals who live in university residence halls or use university computing resources. Because the RIAA can only identify violators by their ISP (Internet Service Provider) identifier, they are sending letters to universities requesting that these letters be forwarded to students, faculty and staff.
The RIAA notified UWM of its plans to send settlement proposal letters for individuals on the UWM campus whom they believe are guilty of violating federal copyright laws. These letters request that a monetary settlement be made by the violator in lieu of court action by the RIAA.
After consultation with UW System, our own legal counsel and with our understanding of federal law, UWM has decided that these letters will not be passed on to individuals. However, should RIAA send UWM a lawful subpoena for users’ account information, UWM will comply.
It is important to be aware of copyright law and avoid illegal P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing.
For more information, visit the UWM Information Security Web Site at https://www3.uwm.edu/imt/security/index.cfm.
If you have questions, please e-mail dmca@uwm.edu.
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UW - Milwaukee follows UW - Madison’s Lead, Will Not Forward RIAA ……
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Trackback by University Update — 26 March 2007 @ 15:10
Joe:
Thanks for helping to communicate the UW response to this issue. We may or may not have different views on the DMCA, but from our perspective this is law and our job is to educate. UWM has consistently dealt with this issue by educating our students, faculty, and staff, and will continue to do so. Our approach has been effective and we see no reason to change course at this time. We now have dial-up, wireless, residence halls, and general campus hardwired access points. Each has challenges with definitively associating an individual with an IP address.
So we will continue to focus on education, as is our primary mission. And if served with a subpoena, we will continue to comply with the law. Thanks for the forum. Bruce.
Bruce Maas
Interim CIO
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Comment by Bruce Maas — 26 March 2007 @ 18:00
Are there no “I’m Spartacus” types at universities these days?
No militant students?
I’d suggest students should adopt the following:
1) No students shall be decimated for RIAA’s pleasure.
2) All students will assert culpable use of any individual student’s account at any specific time.
3) No student is permitted to make any monetary settlement, nor is the university permitted to do so on their behalf.
4) Any court action must apply to all students as a whole or none at all.
5) All students hold that since no-one has yet been found guilty of copyright infringement for ‘file-sharing’ or ‘making available’, all offers of monetary settlement in lieu of court action constitute extortion.
Comment by Crosbie Fitch — 27 March 2007 @ 03:57
[…] the RIAA and not forwarded them to the students. I got this tingling feeling when I was reading the latest article about this - not all hope is lost. This is not about harbouring those that engage in copyright […]
Pingback by hackd » Blog Archive » hellooo, wisconsin! — 30 March 2007 @ 10:24