IT Policy & Law

This is a copy of the standard notice that the Digital Millennium Copyright Agent for the university sends by e-mail to the user of an IP address alleged to be distributing copyrighted material without permission.

This case has been opened on behalf of:
Mary Beth Grant, Judicial Administrator
and
Tracy Mitrano, Director of Information Technology Policy

A content owner has sent Cornell University a notice of copyright infringement, a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notice, that attaches to an IP (Internet Protocol) Address and/or a computer system registered in your name. The notice appears below under Supporting Documentation.

From the perspective of Cornell University, the allegation is that you violated University Policy 5.1, Responsible Use of Electronic Communications and its provisions regarding copyright infringement (and, therefore, Title Three, Article II, Section A of the Code of Conduct, which requires compliance with university policies).

To resolve this matter as a violation of the Code of Conduct, you must IMMEDIATELY CEASE AND DESIST from any further file sharing activity in which material is distributed from your computer for which you do not have permission or license from the copyright holder.

Furthermore, WITHIN ONE WEEK, you must pursue ONE of the following courses of actions with the Office of the Judicial Administrator (JA):

1. If you acknowledge that you are responsible for this violation and have never before been referred to the JA, you have the option of an "expedited resolution." To take advantage of this option you must take and pass an on-line tutorial about copyright law. The tutorial has a fee of $35 that can be paid with a credit card. If you are not able to use a credit card to pay for the tutorial, please contact the JA's Office at 607-255-4680 to have this fee applied to your Bursar bill. The tutorial can be accessed at: http://www.ecornell.com/digitalcopyright Please be prepared to enter the case number that appears at the head of this notification. Once the tutorial is finished, the matter will be closed with an "Oral Warning." No disciplinary records are maintained for oral warnings, consistent with the policies of the JA's Office.
2. If you have been referred to the JA previously, whether or not the prior referral was for a digital copyright violation and whether or not you agree that you violated the Code this time, you must meet with the JA's Office. Please arrange an appointment by calling 607-255-4680. If you agree you violated the Code and have not previously completed the on-line tutorial described above, that will be part of your recommended sanction. It is acceptable to complete the tutorial prior to your meeting.
3. If you do not believe you violated the Code, please schedule an appointment with the JA by calling 607-255-4680.

The actions required of you to resolve this matter involve only Cornell University, NOT the content owner who sent us the original message. Cornell University will NOT disclose your name or contact information to this content owner UNLESS the content owner initiates formal legal action and issues the university a legitimate subpoena. A DMCA notice is a "cease and desist" order, but it is not a claim in federal court for copyright infringement, which would begin with a "John Doe subpoena" to identify the user of the Internet Protocol address named in the DMCA notice. In most cases, content owners do nothing more than issue the DMCA notices, though of late they have been bringing full lawsuits against individual users, even in cases of minor infringements such as a single song, movie or video.

Cornell University does not monitor its networks for content and did NOT generate this DMCA notice. Content owners or their agents use technologies to detect and/or allege violations of their copyright that do not involve the Cornell University network.

Information regarding the Code of Conduct and your rights in the campus disciplinary system may be found at: http://cuinfo.cornell.edu/Admin/judicial_system.html or you may contact the JA's Office at 607-255-4680.

If, as a legal matter, you believe you have permission, license or qualify for some other exception of federal law to distribute this material, please contact the Office of University Counsel at 607-255-5125 for information about a legal counter-notice to the notice that Cornell University has received. http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/policy/Filing_DMCA_Complaints.htm

If you believe this notice is in factual error, please check your hard drive nonetheless for files names listed on the notice.

Peer-to-peer file-sharing applications continue uploading files to other people's computers even when the application's window is closed. To stop uploading, you must either completely remove the P2P application from your computer, or locate and change the options that control uploading in the particular application you are using, or disconnect the computer from the network. For more information about how to uninstall or disable these programs, please go to: http://www.cit.cornell.edu/policy/copyright/uploadstop.cfm

The infringement may be the result of a compromise of your computer's security, which must be remedied to protect the integrity of the Cornell networks and operations. Please contact the CIT HelpDesk to remedy the problem and to have them substantiate that a security breach was the cause of the notice. http://www.cit.cornell.edu/services/helpdesk/