Statement on Recording Industry Association of America "settlement" letters to be placed on the web.

In February of this year the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) introduced a new strategy for dealing with copyright infringement that may impact individuals at UNI. As I'm sure you're aware, copyright infringement via the Internet has been a hot topic between the recording industry and consumers for the past several years. The new RIAA strategy includes providing a "settlement letter" to universities/Internet Service Provider (ISP) that is to be forwarded to alleged violators and a "preservation notice" that is addressed to the university/ ISP. The "settlement" letter offers the opportunity for alleged violators to settle out of court. The "preservation letter" is notice to the university/ISP to preserve specific records that could be useful in a court case.

In February of this year the RIAA distributed about 400 settlement letters to 13 universities. As of April, over a hundred recipients had accepted the RIAA offer to settle out of court. Settlements have been reported to be in the $3,000-$5,000 range.

UNI does not routinely monitor for sharing of copyright protected material such as music, movies, television programs, games, software and books. These complaints are coming from the owners of the copyright protected material. UNI has a legal responsibility to respond according to campus policy and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). UNI respects the rights of ownership for all intellectual or entertainment property protected by copyright and explicitly prohibits the illegal sharing of copyright protected material.

For individuals who receive their Internet access from a provider other than UNI(e.g Mediacom, CFU, Qwest, etc.), you should ask your ISP how they will be handling "settlement" and "preservation" letters. In the event that UNI receives one these letters we will proceed as follows:

"Settlement Letters"

Should UNI receive an RIAA "settlement letter" it will treat the letter as a DMCA notice so long as it meets all the legal elements. Network Services will forward the "settlement letter" along with the local procedures for addressing alleged DMCA violations. UNI does NOT release the name of a user to the content owner upon receipt of a DMCA notice. UNI will only provide this information if served with a subpoena.

"Preservation Notices"

Should UNI receives a "preservation letter," which requests the holding of basic contact information for the individual but does not meet all the elements of a DMCA notice, we will preserve the requested information and simply forward the letter to the user for his or her information. If nothing else, the individual may want to know that the content owner has identified their network activity as potentially infringing of their copyright. Again, unless served with a proper subpoena, UNI will not release the contact information based on the preservation notice alone.

Downloading of music, movies, games, software, etc. that is copyright protected may very likely be theft. Sharing of this information without the authorization of the owner is a copyright violation. Running of peer-to-peer software such as Gnutella, Ares, Blubster, Edonkey, Limewire and Bit-Torrent may be putting you at serious risk of inadvertently sharing copyright protected materials. Individuals who do infringe copyright should reconsider that activity in light of the pervasive monitoring of file sharing that content owners do on the Internet.

If a user receives one of these "settlement letters" or "preservation notices" he or she has complete responsibility to decide or choose how to respond to the RIAA and may want to consult with his or her counsel before making a decision.

If you have questions concerning peer-to-peer sharing programs, contact the UNI Computer Consulting Center (273-5555). Below are links you may find useful in understanding copyright protected materials at UNI and under federal law.

UNI's Policy on Use of Computing Resources
http://www.uni.edu/pres/policies/954.shtml

UNI's Policies on intellectual rights and copyright
http://www.uni.edu/pres/policies/952.shtml
http://www.uni.edu/pres/policies/1003.shtml

Digital Millennium Copyright Act resources
http://www.educause.edu/issues/dmca.html

If you have questions about this communications please feel free to contact me directly.

Steve Moon
Acting Associate Vice President for Information Technology
DMCA Registered Agent
Steve.moon@uni.edu
273-6813