Downloading Legalities
New federal regulations that took effect this summer requiring colleges to take steps to deal with illegal music and movie downloading on campus networks. I listened to Heidi Wachs, Georgetown University's director of IT policy, talk about it on an episode of Tech Therapy.
It reminded me of the time back in early 2007 when I was bringing NJIT into iTunes U and we needed legal to review our policies on copyright. Like many colleges, there were policies that needed to be there that didn't exist.
It's hard to fall back on protections like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) when you haven't done any of the work that affords you that protection.
The firestorm of fines and publicity about students downloading files illegally seems to died down the past year, but the consequences still exist - and many schools are still very unprepared.
Copyright infringement is the act of exercising, without permission or legal authority, one or more of the exclusive rights granted to the copyright owner under section 106 of the Copyright Act (Title 17 of the United States Code). These rights include the right to reproduce or distribute a copyrighted work. In the file-sharing context, downloading or uploading substantial parts of a copyrighted work without authority constitutes an infringement.
For more information, please see the Web site of the U.S. Copyright Office at www.copyright.gov, especially their FAQ's at www.copyright.gov/help/faq.
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