This page details the process of how notifications are handled when a media company contacts the University to report a possible copyright violation.

Industries that rely heavily on the creation and sale of digital materials - like record companies, movie studios, and software vendors - monitor the Internet aggressively to detect and prosecute violations of their copyrights. When one of these agencies discovers what it believes to be a copyright infringement by a computer on the Lawrence network, it triggers the following chain of events:

  1. The agency sends a violation notice to the University's DMCA contact. (See a sample violation notice)
  2. The contact asks Technology Services to locate the computer specified in the alleged violation, determine who owns or is responsible for that machine, and forward that information to the Dean of Students. Just for illustration purposes, let's say that person is you.
  3. If it's the first time you've been cited for a violation, you'll be contacted by the Dean of Students, reminded of the law, and asked to remove the offending content from your computer. Assuming you comply, that's the end of it. If you have questions about how to remove illegal content, please contact the TS Helpdesk.
  4. Failure to restrict peer-to-peer filesharing applications appropriately, whether or not you were aware of the violation, will result in your computer being removed from the network until the copyright violation has been rectified. Any further reports of copyright infringement or violations of the computer use policy may result in a referral to the campus Judicial Board.

While it may well be that you were unaware your activity was illegal, you are still responsible for how your computer is used, and all the outcomes described above still apply.

Can the University protect the identities of individual students from industry representatives?
The University can't protect individuals who, knowingly or not, distribute copyrighted material without an appropriate license. Typically, when industry representatives send a copyright complaint to Lawrence, they don't ask us to identify the specific person whose computer hosted the alleged infringement; they just want it stopped. If they do make such a request via a court order, though, the University has no choice but to comply. Individual students have been sued for copyright violations in cases like these.

Counter-notification
If you are certain that you are legally using the material the copyright owner says you are infringing upon, or that the copyright owner has misidentified the material, you can file a counter-notice - after you remove the specified material from your computer or network access to your machine has been disabled.

Back to the main Filesharing information page