Don’t Click on that Article!

The University of Kansas is taking a get-tough approach to copyright.

Violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is against the law. If you are caught downloading copyrighted material, you will lose your ResNet privileges forever. No second notices, no excuses, no refunds. One violation and your ResNet internet access is gone for as long as you reside on campus.

So don’t use those full-text library databases. Those articles are copyrighted. Sure, they’re licensed for the campus, but according to this policy, you will lose your network privileges forever. No excuses! Even though it’s not a violation of the law.

According to Ars Technica, quoting the Lawrence Journal-World, the new policy is a result of receiving increasing numbers of takedown notices from the RIAA. It’s kind of hard to educate students about copyright when the institution’s own tech folks get it so wrong. And it’s kind of hard to take violations seriously when zero tolerance means zero respect for sharing legally and zero understanding of fair use.

Author: Barbara Fister

I'm an academic librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. Like all librarians at our small, liberal arts institution I am involved in reference, collection development, and shared management of the library. My area of specialization is instruction, with research interests also in media literacy, popular literacy, publishing, and assessment. View all posts by Barbara Fister