Task Force to Review File Sharing Policy

Link to the Article: http://www.kansan.com/stories/2007/oct/18/Downloading/?news





The article that I read talked about the University of Kansas's policy of illegal file sharing. The schools policy used to state that after three strikes students would face legal issues. The University just recently changed its policy to a zero tolerance policy where any student caught using any illegla file sharing system would be immediatly punished. The change was due to many complaints that students had faced legal troubles from the Record Industry Association of America and were never notified by the University. The students had not directly recieved the charges and therefore did not find out about the fines untill weeks later. Many students claimed that they would have taken immediate action as soon they recieved the charges, but since they were notified at a much later time the reprocussions were worse.

I think that the situation at the University has gotten better but was strange to begin with. Having a three strike system makes no since at such a large university. With thousands of students catching one in perticular three times seems very unlikely. This gives off the appearance that the University is too leneant on illegal file sharing, thus making it less of an issue to its students. Since many students figured that they had three chances they probably felt safe downloading untill their first or secong strike. The bad part is, is that the RIAA only gives you one chance, and once that is broken then you are faced with lawsuits and face massive fines. It does seem strange that the individuals were not directly notified of their lawsuits and that the RIAA would leave it up to the University to distribute the infactions. The fact that the students did not directly recieve notification does not excuse their actions, but I still feel the RIAA's punishments are far more stict than they should be.

-Brad