Re: Re: compliance procedure?

At 06:15 PM 4/30/2004 -0400, Robert Panzer wrote:
>Bottom line: if someone were in a suing mood, they could and would sue the
>college. I doubt any court would let the college off the hook because of an
>agreement between it and a faculty member, who is an employee of the
>college. Even if the faculty member were a part-time outside contractor, I
>would still think the college would ultimately be responsible for anything
>that goes out to the public ostensibly under its imprimatur.
Agreed that someone might sue, but a question I have been wondering about for some time is whether or not a University may claim to be an online "service provider" as defined within section 512(C) of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/) and thereby distance itself from any miscreants within its community. Stanford University seems to think it can (see
http://www.stanford.edu/group/itss-ccs/security/dmca.html). Does anyone know if a University has successfully defended itself in this way?

Academe has distanced itself from the intellectual property of its faculty in cases of copyright ownership (by, among other things, allowing faculty to assign copyrights to publishers, independently of direct University involvement), and courts seem to have given a modicum of approval to this partial independence of the institution from its employees' ideas and writings. So might this argue favorably for an institution which seeks to disavow infringing behavior of a faculty member or student?

David Dailey Received on Mon May 03 2004 - 23:37:04 GMT