DMCA Notice Response: Employees

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 say URGENT, RESPONSE REQUIRED: DMCA Copyright Complaint for Employee [UVA computing id] (with your computing id inserted between the brackets).  

You will receive an email notifying you of the alleged copyright infringement. A copy of this message is also emailed to staff members  in University Human Resources (UHR), who will inform your unit head or department chair of the copyright infringement complaint received, and the federal laws and University policies allegedly violated. 

What Do I Do Next?

To satisfy the requirements of the DMCA and UVA policy, if you receive a DMCA take-down notice (AKA copyright complaint) from us, 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 within one business day to the email we sent you with this statement: "I have ceased the unauthorized sharing of copyrighted material from my computer." 
    If you believe the notification was forwarded to you in error, please counsult the "Counter-notification" section below.
    Note: Please reply to the email we send you, not to the copyright holder or agent.

  4. If you don't reply back within one (1) business day, your 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.  

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

While it is possible 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 on the UVA network. If you need guidance on how to secure your machine against hackers and other threats, visit our device security webpage.

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 show us you have completed the steps detailed in the DMCA counter-notification web page.