Copyright Infringement Policy for Students

Policy

Under US Copyright Law (see Footnotes below), MIT, as an online service provider, is required to have adopted, reasonably implemented, and informed subscribers and account holders of a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of account holders who are repeat infringers. Informing subscribers and account holders of alleged acts of infringement is a crucial element to MIT's policy. The procedures included below for handling takedown notices and for handling repeat infringement fulfills MIT’s legal obligations.

Takedown Notice Procedure for Students

Note: Takedown notices are only one kind of notice that MIT might receive from a copyright owner. The other common ones are preservation requests, settlement letters, and subpoenas.

When MIT receives a takedown notice, it is expeditiously forwarded to the member of the MIT community that uses, owns, controls or has some kind of administrative or technical responsibility for the machine indicated in the notice, based on records maintained by IS&T.

To ensure that MIT meets its obligation, the contacted user is required to remove or block access to all materials identified as infringing (as well as any other infringing material) and to respond to MIT's DMCA agent within 5 days of the forwarding of the takedown notice. Failure to respond will result in IS&T expeditiously blocking network access to the computer(s) alleged to be serving unauthorized materials. Under the law, account holders have the right to file a counter notification for materials listed in the takedown notice.

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Repeat Infringement Procedure for Students

Takedown notice cases are periodically reviewed in order to determine if a possibility of repeat infringement exists.

For students who have received only one takedown notice, and have responded as above, no further actions are taken. When a student receives two or more takedown notices, we adopt the following procedures.

For students for whom we conclude that a second offense has occurred, the Director of Student Mediation and Community Standards (OSM&CS) will inform them that a case of repeated infringement has been referred for formal disciplinary consideration, that a file is being generated for this student as an internal record, and that any other violation of this or any other MIT policy will automatically result in at least an administrative hearing, and may be sent directly to the Committee On Discipline (COD), where sanctions ranging up to and including termination of network service may be levied. This is an opportunity for the student to meet to discuss the disciplinary process.

For students for whom we conclude that a third offense has occurred, they are required to appear for an administrative review with the Director of OSM&CS and a member of the COD, and at a minimum they will be placed on informal probation for no less than one year and required to attend a mandatory training session on Copyright at MIT if they are found responsible.

For students for whom we conclude that more than three offenses have occurred, a complaint will be brought before the Committee on Discipline, in accordance with COD procedures, and if found responsible could face suspension or expulsion from the Institute.

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Footnotes

The two relevant sections of the US Copyright Law for this policy are:

• 17 USC § 512 (c)(1)(E): " …respond expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing upon notification of claimed infringement"
  
  
• 17 USC § 512 (i)(1)(A): " …adopted and reasonably implemented, and informs subscribers and account holders of the service provider’s system or network of, a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the service provider’s system or network who are repeat infringers…"

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