by: Jennifer Delgado
The Des Plaines Public Library is changing its wi-fi policy after being threatened with a federal lawsuit because a patron used its internet to bootleg an Academy Award-winning movie.
The new policy hasn’t been crafted yet, but those caught illegally downloading will most likely be banned from the library and from using its services for a certain amount of time, said Library Director Holly Sorenson.
“If this happened several times in a row, the response would have been sterner,” Sorenson said, adding there apparently was one download by somebody who can’t be tracked. “We felt this was a conservative approach.”
The lawsuit is part of a nationwide crackdown stemming from last year when producers of the 2010 best picture Oscar winner ‘The Hurt Locker’ went after 5,000 “John Doe” defendants accused of piracy identified by their IP addresses.
Lawyers representing the production company, Voltage Pictures, told the library last month it violated copyright infringement laws when a copy of the movie was illegally downloaded and shared through a peer-to-peer network. The library was told it could be named in a U.S. District Court lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C., unless it paid $2,900 by March 11 or $3,900 after that date, according to a settlement letter sent to the library.
Because the facility doesn’t exclusively monitor that network, it’s impossible to know who illegally copied the film, library officials said.
The Des Plaines library avoided any legal action by sending invoices for its 12 copies of ‘The Hurt Locker’ and proving that the wireless internet is a separate network used only by patrons. The facility also sent the production company’s lawyers its current wireless internet policy, which states, “the connection shall not be used for illegal purposes nor used in such a way to violate library policies.”
It’s generally impossible for libraries to prevent illegal activity on a wireless network, said Carrie Russell, a copyright specialist for the American Library Association. She recommends institutions sign up for The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which protects various online service providers from being held liable in copyright infringement cases.
Settlement letters don’t prove there was a violation and usually are used to scare libraries into forking over money, Russell said.
“It’s much easier to get someone to pay you money than go to court,” she said. “It’s really a great strategy for the (copyright) holders to collect money without any proof of wrongdoing.”
Institutions of all sizes need to track movement on their internet connections, said Gregory Jackson, vice-president of policy and analysis for EDUCAUSE, a non-profit that promotes the “intelligent use of information technology,” but libraries may balk at that.
“Libraries really don’t like to do that. They have a deep-seated sense that ‘we’re not supposed to be tracking what people are reading or doing,’” Jackson said.
Des Plaines library officials said they are in the process of enlisting with the copyright act, which mandates making consequences part of wireless policies. That’s why the library is changing its guidelines.
Sorenson acknowledged that a revamped policy will be hard to enforce when the library doesn’t monitor every device that hooks up to its wireless internet. It wouldn’t be cost-effective to have an employee watching for illegal activity on that network and the library doesn’t have enough virtual storage to capture every action, she added.
“You say, ‘if we catch you, we will revoke your privileges’ … but how do you catch them?”
from: Triblocal
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