The New York Times' technology blog, BITS, discusses why DMCA takedown notices being sent to universities around the country are stupid. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a party that feels its content is being infringed need only suggest that infringement may be going on and may then send a "takedown notice" to the infringing party's internet service provider. There are no evidentiary requirements and no standard of doubt (no "probable cause," no "reasonable doubt," not even "preponderance of the evidence"), so the owner of a copyrighted work can send a takedown notice — and the ISP can comply — even if the content isn't legally infringing. Under the DMCA, an accusation of infringement is enough to get ISPs — which largely don't know the law and are afraid of getting into legal wrangling — to turn off the Internet pipes to the infringer.

From the article:

Many universities pass those letters directly on to students without questioning the veracity of the allegations. The R.I.A.A. in particular follows up some of those notices by threatening legal action and forcing alleged file-sharers into a financial settlement.

But the study, released Thursday by Tadayoshi Kohno, an assistant professor, Michael Piatek a graduate student, and Arvind Krishnamurthy, a research assistant professor, all at the University of Washington, argues that perhaps those takedown notices should be viewed more skeptically.

The paper finds that there is a serious flaw in how these trade groups finger alleged file-sharers. It also suggests that some people might be getting improperly accused of sharing copyrighted content, and could even be purposely framed by other users.

The RIAA and MPAA, the trade organizations for the music and movie industries, respectively, have successfully lobbied to have Congress place line-items into federal university funding legislation requiring public universities to police their networks for copyright infringers and/or allow the RIAA and MPAA to have access to their networks to catch infringers. This is incredibly stupid because of (1) the privacy issues concerned (after all, FERPA strictly limits disclosure of student records to only the student, if the student is over 18) and (2) the fact that colleges are not in the business of policing for copyright violations. The article demonstrates how the RIAA and MPAA's own tools for finding violations can be easily misdirected, resulting in false positives.

Last year, the University of Nebraska agreed to comply with RIAA requests to hunt down file-sharers — for a price. The university estimated that it cost them $11 per accusation to find the culprit, and that if the RIAA wanted them to do a job that wasn't theirs to begin with, the university would charge the RIAA for it.