Every semester, the Office of Technology Services, OTS, sends out a message to the University community reminding them that the University abides by the DMCA. Under the provisions of the DMCA, copyright holders have the ability to send “take down” notices to the University when they, or an online detective agency operating on their behalf, find instances of copyright infringement by students using the University’s network.

When the University receives a take down notice from a copyright holder, the student’s computer will be disconnected from the University network and banned from re-connection for 10 academic weekdays if it is a first offense, 20 academic weekdays if a second offense, and on a third offense, the matter is referred to the Judicial Office, resulting in a reduction in housing status, and sanctions up through and including suspension or dismissal from the University.

Andrew Hillberry, the Chief Information Officer of OTS, says, “What we do from our standpoint in OTS is we’re required to identify the particular physical port where they’re downloading from; and from that point we go through series of evaluations determining from a technical standpoint which port it was downloaded from and deactivate that port.”

Hillberry also says that after the message went out there was a decrease in downloads however it does pick back up after a bit but once a student gets the first offense they usually cease downloading.

For a link to the full message go to, http://unotes.hartford.edu/announcements/2016/10/2016-10-21-caution-downloading-copyrighted-music-or-videos-can-be-a-very-serious-illegal-activity.aspx