WMU Tells Students How to Hide From RIAA/MPAA
Yesterday on Boing Boing Cory Doctorow posted about how UCLA tries to scare students out of downloading anything, warning that “most material is copyrighted” without explaining things such as fair use. I was curious how Western Michigan University covered copyright on their website, and found a few interesting links hosted by their Office of Information Technology:
How to disable file uploading on most file sharing clients
I’m glad that Western does explain to students what fair use, and amused that they explain how to disable uploads. However, the only way a student will find this fair use page is if they go out of their way to look for it on the website. There are a few anti-piracy posters around campus that try to scare you out of downloading; they should at least tell students to look to their site for more information. I would also like to see fair use explained more simply. I imagine a lot of students won’t feel like reading a chunk of the US Copyright Act, even if it is pretty straightforward.
