DMCA Notice Response: Affiliates

If You Have Received Notice of a DMCA Copyright Complaint

If you have received a notice of a DMCA copyright violation, this indicates that a copyright owner or owner's agent has notified UVA that you are violating their copyright by downloading, sharing, or copying media.  UVA does not monitor for these violations, however we will launch an internal investigation to track the source of the alleged violation (for example, your computer).  Because you have received this notice, you have been identified as the source of the violation and must take down the offending media.

You can access answers to specific DMCA related questions using the following links:

How Will I Recognize the DMCA Notice? 

They will be very similar to the following:

The sender will be "virginia service-now.com" (which is ITS's Service portal),  and the Subject will contain: URGENT, RESPONSE REQUIRED: DMCA Copyright Complaint for [Your Name Here] (with your name inserted between the brackets).

What Do I Do Next?

To satisfy the requirements of the DMCA and UVA policy, if you receive a DMCA takedown notice (AKA copyright complaint), please follow these instructions:

1) You must delete the file(s), song, movie, etc., unless it was obtained legally. If you got it by illegal download, copying from someone else's DVD, etc., then delete it.

2) We strongly recommend you remove or disable the file sharing software on your computer (also called "torrent" software). For assistance, please consult our webpage: Removing BitTorrent software.

3) You must REPLY promptly to the email we send you with this statement typed out: "I have ceased the unauthorized sharing of copyrighted material from my computer." 
Note: Please reply to the email we send you, not to the copyright holder or agent.

4)   If you don't reply to the email we sent you by the next business day, your computer's UVA network access will be blocked. If you do not respond within one business day, your computer(s) will be blocked from accessing the UVA network until you do respond as requested in number 3 above.  

5) If this is not the first DMCA copyright complaint incident, your computer's UVA network access will be blocked IMMEDIATELY. Then we will forward the DMCA copyright complaint to you for your response. We will unblock your UVA network access after we receive an appropriate reply

Please be aware that regardless of what UVA does, the copyright holder may still pursue additional legal action against you.

While it may well be that you were unaware that the activity is illegal - or that someone else has used security vulnerabilities on your computer to conduct illegal activity without your knowledge - you are still responsible for how your computer is used. If you need some guidance on how to secure your machine against hackers and other threats, visit our information security site at https://security.virginia.edu/ and follow the link for users of personal computers.

Counter-notification

If you are certain that you are legally using the material the copyright owner says you are infringing upon, or that the copyright owner has misidentified the material, you can file a counter-notice - after you remove the specified material from your computer or network access to your computer (network device) has been disabled. It is highly unlikely that you should file a counter-notification. To do so, you must reply to the UVA email you received and provide us with evidence that you have completed the steps detailed in the DMCA counter-notification webpage.