Stanford Turns DMCA Complaints Into Cash
Stanford University, the birth place of Yahoo! and Google, has come up with a lucrative way to deal with DMCA complaints from the MPAA and RIAA against its students: terminate their Internet service and charge a reconnection fee. First time offenders will be charged $100, a second offense will cost $500, and a third DMCA means paying $1000 and signing a letter idemnifying the school.
The school claims they get so many complaints that it takes three full time employees to sort through them all, and the fees will help pay for those resources. Schools fingered by the RIAA and MPAA as top havens of piracy have taken divergent approaches toward dealing with the problem. Some have banned P2P traffic outright, some have simply ignored the complaints from the industry associations, and others, like the University of Wisconsin-Madison, are demanding a formal subpoena before handing over any student information. But Stanford might be the only school that has tried to turn a profit out of it.
The RIAA has been more aggressive at targetting students for copyright infringement. Sending "pre-litigation" settlement notices to students, which threaten lawsuits and offer a settlement for a nominal fee (usually around $3000). Some have pointed out that these settlements are generally small enough that it is not worth it for students to go to court. Some people, however, suspect that US and international courts will soon find that the IP gathering and monitoring techniques used by the RIAA in order to get information about users to send out its "pre-litigation" notices are not legal.
Getting back to Stanford, the text of their policy says that piracy on their network has reached "unacceptable levels," before mentioning that the MPAA recently named the school as one of "Americaís top 25 worst offenders" in terms of piracy. The announcement from Stanford goes on to say that dealing with DMCA notices "is an irresponsible waste of Stanfordís resources." That seems to imply that the DMCA and PR campaigns by the recording and motion picture associations are having the effect of causing ISPs to expend resources they don't want to. And some, like Stanford, will pass those costs onto consumers. Do you think it is fair for ISPs (including educational institutions that offer Internet access) to do that?
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There was another school - and the name of it slips my mind at the moment - but they have responded to the RIAA/MPAA by imposing a fee for forwarding the message on to the student.
If the RIAA/MPAA pays the fee per student, the university will gladly forward the settlement paperwork to that student. Otherwise, no dice.
Of COURSE it's fair. It is fair for ANY business to pass on costs to consumers. Whether it proves to be a good decision or not is a different question.
I think these students should all just start self-insuring against RIAA/MPAA suits - each pay $50 a year into a pool - the pool pays the fine of poor soul who get's tapped - the one out of a thousand that get tapped.
Actually, that sounds like a fairly lucrative market...
Rob
I disagree with you Rob, because a DMCA complaint does not prove you have done anything illegal. We have seen several cases in the public eye that have been the target of the DMCA backed by the RIAA/MPAA where they end up loosing the case.
In fact, I see this backfiring where Standford will probably be sued by its own students that go to law school there.
This university has forgotten everything that used to make this place great. Now it's jump through hoops to try to start any student organization, raise tuition every year despite making phenomenal returns on the endowment, and oh yeah, charge students for things that our own law professors deem to be not unethical. In general, it's running itself as a business that responds to its own board (and maybe its stats and endowment) instead of trying to make life better for its students.
This SUCKS, and it makes me sad because I used to love Stanford.
It's not really all that illogical. The RIAA/MPAA has got the whole network tapped like crazy, forget to use software protection and you'll get an e-mail within a number of hours from the respective studio. And actually, if you respond to the complaint within 48 hours, that first time, nothing happens. They only start charging you money to "reconnect" you after you've been unplugged from the system entirely.
They're required by law to unplug you, and if they implement a system like this, then kids are forced to learn how to do it in a manner that won't get them tapped, which is a good thing to know wherever you are.
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