[385] in resnet
Re: NetPD and DMCA
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David P. Allen)
Wed Nov 14 14:30:18 2001
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Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.4.40.0111141058330.29230-100000@sage.plu.edu>
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2001 11:24:38 -0800
Reply-To: Resnet Forum <RESNET-L@listserv.nd.edu>
From: "David P. Allen" <allendp@PLU.EDU>
To: RESNET-L@listserv.nd.edu
In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.58.20011114094406.0094a630@127.0.0.1>
On Wed, 14 Nov 2001, Pat Kava wrote:
> NetPD is a watchdog company that detects student MP3 file sharers and
> ...snip...
> file names. Rodney J. Petersen of the University of Maryland at
> College Park argued that the university has no responsibility to
> respond to the letters since its network is just a channel for the
> copyrighted material. He said the quarrel should be between students
> and the copyright owners. Furthermore, he said the DMCA requires that
> the letters must clearly state that the company is an agent of the
> copyright holders--something the NetPD letters do not. Letter content
> and notification is approved by NetPD's clients before being sent out,
> according to Ward. (Chronicle of Higher Education Online, 7 November
> 2001)
For anyone who is not on the SANS Unisog list, you might be interested to
know that Bruce Ward the Technical Director of NetPD has joined the list.
In fact, he has been getting a lot of feedback from schools around the US
about the problem we have seen with their methods. It appears that
starting later this week they will begin sending out all of their
notifications with PGP signatures, thereby finally "signing" their notices
and satisfying one of the requirements they failed to meet thus far. I
think they still need to clarify their status as an agent of the various
copyright holders, but they certainly seem to be trying to work with the
schools to do this properly.
I have to disagree with at least one of Mr. Petersen's comments above
about the responsibility of the University to respond to the letters. If
NetPD (or another similar agency) follows the proper procedure laid out in
the DMCA, it is pretty clear that we are responsible for responding to
their notification and passing that information to the alleged offender
(student or otherwise). If we do not perform that action we (as an
institution) become liable. How the copyrighted material should be
eliminated or blocked seems to be a little unclear, but if the student (or
staff member) responds and removes the material it sure keeps it simple.
As for the second comment, I agree that the quarrel should be between the
copyright holder and the alleged offender, but the DMCA does not let us
avoid involvement.
David P. Allen
Network Manager
Pacific Lutheran University
{ (253) 535-7524 | "...one of the main causes of the fall of }
{ allendp@PLU.edu | Rome was that, lacking zero, they had no }
{ www.plu.edu/~allendp | way to indicate successful termination of }
{ | their C programs." --Robert Firth }
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