Letter to All Students Regarding Recording Industry Association of America "Settlement Letters" and "Preservation Notices"
April 11, 2007
No doubt you have already heard about the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)'s new strategy for addressing copyright violation. The RIAA sends campus Internet Service Providers (ISP) "settlement letters" with Internet Protocol addresses of alleged offenders requesting that the ISP forward the letters to users whom they allege have infringed upon RIAA copyrights.
Cornell University already acts on Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices as a matter of University Policy 5.1, Responsible Use of Electronic Communications.
It will treat RIAA "settlement letters" in the following manner:
"Settlement Letters" (Sample RIAA settlement letters can be found here.)
Should Cornell receive a RIAA "settlement letter" it will treat the letter as a DMCA notice so long as it meets all the legal elements. As already is our practice, the Network Operations Center will forward the "settlement letter" together with Cornell's standard DMCA notice letter to the user. The Code of Conduct requires a response internally as a matter of policy. (A sample Cornell letter can be found here.)
The decision to communicate with the content owner or not is left up to the discretion of the user completely. He or she may want to seek legal counsel before making this decision. Please understand that Cornell University has a policy of not monitoring the network or hard drives of computers connected to it for content and does not generate DMCA notices. Cornell University is not a party to these matters. Unless served with a proper subpoena, Cornell University does NOT release the name of a user to the content owner upon receipt of a DMCA notice.
Preservation Notices
In addition to these "settlement letters," the RIAA has also sent a number of "preservation notices" to many colleges and universities requesting that the ISP preserve contact information for persons associated with an Internet Protocol address they allege is being used to violate their copyright. If Cornell University 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, the Office of University Counsel has requested that the DMCA agent forward those notices to their office. Again, unless served with a proper subpoena, Cornell University will not release the contact information based on the preservation notice alone.
At this time it is worth reminding students that, in addition to the RIAA, many content owners send DMCA letters for videos, movies, games and software. Students who do infringe copyright may want to reconsider that activity in light of the pervasive monitoring of file sharing that content owners do on the Internet.
Also, copyright is a national policy issue as well as a concern for students who enjoy entertainment protected by intellectual property legislation. Please take the opportunity to learn more about these important issues through classes, reading newspapers and journals or attending a Computer Policy and Law Program which frequently features this issue.
Finally, if you have specific questions about this message, feel free to write to me at it_policies@cornell.edu.
Tracy Mitrano
DMCA Registered Agent
Cornell University
http://www.cit.cornell.edu/oit/PolicyOffice.html