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Copyright Information

CSRT acts as a steward for the university when responding to reports of copyright infringement. As a team dedicated to maintaining the integrity and survivability of the university's network, we will act on each notice and investigate each incident to validate reports. Whereas the report of copyright violation is found to be valid, we will then send a service request to our Networks and Telecom group to disable the host. We may also send reports of the incident to the university's Office of General Counsel, the Dean of Students (in the event that a student is the offending party) or a department manager in the case of a staff member found to be in violation of the DMCA. A summary of port deactivation procedures can be found in our document titled Network Connectivity Suspension Policies and Procedures.

Reports of DMCA violations should be submitted to CSRT by sending mail to abuse@depaul.edu. We require a digitally signed message that allows us to verify your identity.

What is the DMCA?

The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) focuses on the protection of an authors' rights to intellectual property in a digital age. The Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on 12 Oct 1998 and signed into Public Law 105-304 on 28 Oct 28 1998 by President William Clinton. The DMCA was designed primarily to sufficiently address the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties signed at the Geneva conference during December of 1996. The DMCA is, by far, the largest Act to supersede pre-existing U.S. copyright law in more than a generation. DMCA highlights include the following:

Outlaws the circumvention of anti-piracy techniques employed by software creators while outlawing the creation, distribution and deployment of "code-cracking" devices built specifically for the circumvention of anti-piracy measures.
Permits the research and testing of such copyright protection devices to assess their encryption measures, interoperability and security integrity.
Limits the distribution of unauthorized or unlicensed copyrighted material including provisions for service providers to limit copyright infringement liability through preventing further spread of copyrighted material and removing such material from hosts, where necessary. Further, limits the liability of higher education institutions in the event they provide connectivity services for faculty and graduate level students.
Requires specific licensing fees to be properly distributed towards artists and authors during Internet broadcasts.

DePaul University, as a service provider for students, faculty and staff, must honor the DMCA in accordance with applicable laws.

Preventing P2P Copyright Infringement

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks have become a commonplace for the exchange of material ranging from movies, music, images, software and more. One of the first vendors of wide-scale P2P networks was Napster, Inc, with others such as Aimster, Gnutella, KaZaA, Limewire and others following closely after. P2P sharing can also be performed by using the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) via the Direct Client to Client (DCC) protocol, a method in existence since the early conception of IRC networks.

Over 90% of the reports we receive regarding copyright infringement are due to Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file shares that permit sharing of copyrighted material (read: pirated material) with the Internet. Often times these violations are committed by persons unbeknownst to the DMCA or copyright law. By permitting such sharing in your P2P client, you effectively permit online "anti-piracy investigators" to find offending material on your computer.

To combat this problem, we strongly urge you to disable file sharing in your P2P client. In most clients, this can be performed through an explicit option being set in the configuration preferences, or through changing the number of "allowed uploads" to zero (0). You may also find Disabling Peer to Peer File Sharing a useful link credited to the University of Chicago Network Security Team.

Further Reading