The fun is over for American students: unis take action against file-sharing

American universities that receive federal funding are, from this academic year on, required by law to act against file-sharing over their networks. The Higher Education Opportunity Act that was adopted in 2008 went in to effect last July. To prepare for this event, the Department of Education has created implementation rules that universities need to adhere to.

In a letter sent to all unis, the DoE has stipulated four rules that need to be followed in order to comply with the Act.

•    Institutions need to take one or more technical measures that act as deterrents in order to reduce the amount of file-sharing.

•    They need to develop educational campaigns to encourage people to stop file-sharing and point out what are appropriate and inappropriate uses of copyrighted material.

•    They need to develop procedures to deal with continuing infringers, including disciplinary strategies.

•    Every so often, an assessment needs to be made to see whether the policy is working to the desired effect.

Furthermore, the letter explicitly states that universities should make available lists of legal alternatives and update these regularly so that the demand for content amongst students can be satisfied.

The universities are allowed to choose a technical deterrent of their liking, and it appears that this yields different responses. Ars Technica has made a round of universities to see how they are implementing these deterrents. The use of traffic shaping appears popular, where torrent traffic is throttled. Other universities “jump on the deep packet inspection bandwagon” and screen all campus web traffic, scanning for infringing content. Others comply with a notice and takedown procedure, leading to cutting off the connection from users that are alleged file-sharers. How universities comply with the new regulations differs, but comply they do, as they may lose their federal budgets if they fail to do so.