The University’s newest effort to curb illegal file sharing seems to be working, and has even attracted the attention of NBC Universal.
Of about 8,700 students living in residence halls, only 39 agreed in the fall to use certain peer-to-peer file sharing software legally when prompted by the network to either delete these programs or accept the “hall pass” policy, said Chris Williams, manager of ResNET.
Copyright infringement has been estimated to cost UNC $40,000 a year in legal fees and employee time, prompting UNC to implement hall pass at the start of the fall semester.
If a student does not accept hall pass, he or she must remove peer-to-peer sharing software in order to access the campus network.
If a student violates the hall pass policy, he or she is given a disciplinary referral on the first offense. Previously, a referral occurred on the second offense, while the first only merited an educational session and a meeting with an administrator.
After hall pass was featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education, two companies approached UNC about the policy in November — NBC Universal and MovieLabs, a group of six major motion picture studios.
Larry Conrad, vice chancellor for Information Technology Services, said the groups noticed a decrease in illegal file sharing at UNC and set up a meeting with ITS officials.
“They wanted to find out what we were doing and how it was working,” he said.
“They were very impressed with the program and they wanted to basically package and publicize it as the best practice for higher education across the country.”