Federal Reminder on File Sharing

The U.S. Department of Education has written a letter notifying colleges that the copyright provisions attached last fall to the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 will take effect in July. The provisions, meant to help curb illegal sharing of copyrighted material such as music files on campus networks, require institutions to educate their students on what constitutes illegal sharing; deter them from engaging in such sharing; and develop plans to “offer alternatives to illegal downloading.”