The prevention of illegal downloading of music and movies on the HVCC network remains a top priority at the college as copyright holders are becoming increasingly aggressive in asserting their legal rights in academic settings.
In response to this issue in academia and federal mandates specified by the Higher Education Opportunity Act (H.R. 4137), Hudson Valley Community College licensed an industry-recognized software application to detect the illegal sharing and distribution of copyrighted music, video and other data files on the campus wireless network. This very powerful tool, Audible Magic’s CopySense, has significantly reduced the number of infringement notices at the college since its inception in 2009.
When Audible Magic detects known P2P downloading, a redirect page intended to warn and educate violators appears. Usually, this notice is sufficient to ward off the illegal activity.
Nevertheless, we recently had a case in which a student repeatedly downloaded a copyrighted movie on the HVCC network. Attorneys for the copyright holder required a $200 settlement per violation, totaling $600. It did not stop there, and HVCC exercised due diligence every step of the way. As a result, the student, not the college, was subject to a copyright lawsuit.
The following public service announcement was created to educate students and employees of the risks associated with illegal downloading on the HVCC network. The announcement is located at http://hvcc.libguides.com/psa (click on Copyright Holders Cracking Down – Brief HVCC Video Based on a True Story), is presented in the Library aspect of College Forum, and will be posted on the Library Web page shortly.
We encourage faculty and staff to take a moment to show students this 2 minute video, to share, and continue to maintain HVCC’s excellent record of compliance and due diligence in the copyright arena.
Thank you.
Valerie Lang Waldin, Copyright Officer
Published: Fri, 21 Feb 2014 13:38:05 +0000 by v.waldin