Cornell University’s compliance with section 668.14 of the Higher Education Act of 2008, commonly known as the peer-to-peer provision, includes this documentation of the plans to address unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material by users of the institution’s network.
Since 2002, Cornell Information Technologies has and continues to operate a procedure to respond to Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Notices. Although originally a manual process, it is now largely automated to the user. This automated response begins when the notice comes to the university through the advertised address of abuse_copyright@cornell.edu. The DMCA agent for the university has observational purview of each notice.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Agent for the university requests that the Network Operations Center block the Internet Protocol (IP) address alleged by the notice to be in violation of federal law and provide the agent with the identity of the user or party responsible for the computer (responsible party).
The agent then notifies the user or responsible party of the notice (via an electronic process) and requests a cease and desist statement. The user must click on a button that acknowledges receipt and understanding of the message in order to regain network access. Review of the Copyright Education Course is encouraged but optional for first time offense. A second offence is referred to the Office of Judicial Administration. A third sequential offense, if not mitigated by circumstances, results in the loss of network privileges for a fixed period, typically four weeks, for student users. (For staff, the Network Operations Center forwards the DMCA notice to the Office of Human Resources.)
In addition to this process for responding to DMCA notices, Cornell University has a unique market model, Network Utilization Based Billing, that charges uses for the amount of bandwidth that crosses into the Internet. Although established for the purpose of creating a fair network enterprise system across the university, it has had the unintended salutary effort of reducing bandwidth usage. Consequently, Cornell University has no need to operate a bandwidth-shaping program.
Cornell University did not adopt the deep-packet inspection options that it explored because their use was found to violate university policy that prohibits monitoring the network for content as a practice and because those technological choices were in contradistinction to Cornell University community values and tradition of open inquiry.
Cornell University has played a leading national role in educating users about the appropriate use of copyright material in the digital realm. The Institute for Computer Policy and Law, now in its 15 year, has always included issues related to the peer-to-peer copyright in its curriculum for higher education professionals nationally. Aimed more for the campus community, the University Computer Policy and Law Program has had numerous speakers address this subject and many events focused on the concerns for and about students. Two events stands out in particular, a debate between legal counsel for the R.I.A.A. and a lawyer from Jones Day (who outside of his role in that firm represented the student’s side of the question) and a panel discussion on the subject that included national leaders in this area such as Mr. Sherman, President of the R.I.A.A., Mr. French, Legal Counsel for the M.P.A.A., Mr. Von Lohman, (former) Legal Counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Upon request from many schools we have made these materials available on the Internet and it is know that they have been used in a number of college courses that include copyright in their curriculum.
In addition to these general materials, Cornell University requires that each new student view an educational, three minute video specifically about peer-to-peer file sharing and copyright as a necessary step in their acquisition of a university network identifier. That process occurs before they come to campus.
A day or two before arriving on campus the Dean of Students sends via email a welcome message that includes information about compliance with copyright and the statutory damages of infringement as required by this law.
As is noted above, those students who receive a second sequential DMCA notices, as a part of the consequences to university policy violation, must pay to take an on-line educational course and pass a test with a score of at least 75% correct answers in order to complete it. Students who do not take the test may have their network connection blocked and are reported to the Office of Judicial Administration.
Cornell University was an early adopter of the legal Napster program and later Ruckus; both programs went out of business and were therefore discontinued. To date, Cornell University hosts a principal site devoted to issues of peer-to-peer file sharing and copyright that includes many of the materials identified in the statements above. That site may be found at this address: http://www.cit.cornell.edu/policies/copyright/
Included in that site is information about legal sources for on-line music and videos. This site may be found at: http://www.cit.cornell.edu/policies/copyright/music.cfm
University Counsel convenes a meeting each January to assess Cornell's compliance with the HEOA copyright provisions. In attendance are the Judicial Administrator, the Dean of Students, the Executive Director of Cornell Information Technologies, and the Director of Information Technology Policy (who is also the DMCA agent).
Under Counsel’s direction the group reviews Cornell's policy, procedure and practices and explores the development of new options.
