DMCA Notice Response: Students

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 the 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 find anwers to specific questions regarding the process of responding to a DMCA Complaint Notice 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 [UVA computing ID] (with your computing ID inserted between the brackets).

What Do I Do Next?

To satisfy the requirements of the DMCA and UVA policy, if you receive an email from UVA that includes a DMCA take-down 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" or "BitTorrent" software).  For assistance, please consult our webpage: Removing BitTorrent software.

3) You should REPLY promptly to the email we sent you with this statement typed out: "I have ceased the unauthorized sharing of copyrighted material from my computer." 
If you believe that the notification was forwarded to you in error, please consult the "Counter-notification" section below.
 Note: Please reply to the email we sent you, and 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 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 UVA network access will be blocked IMMEDIATELY as described above. Then we will forward the DMCA copyright complaint to you for your response. We will unblock your network access after we receive an appropriate reply.

6) If after your second incident you have a third (or more) DMCA copyright complaint indicent, in addition to your computer's immediate disconnection from the UVA network, you will also have to meet with a Dean of Students representative from your school.

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

While it may be true 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 device security page.

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 webpage.