The Chronicle: 11/30/2001: New Company Besieges Colleges With Notices About Copyright Violations
Misc.
'Ms. Klimanis was caught by NetPD, a London-based company that has begun using sophisticated technology to sniff out people who share copyrighted files and to send out letters of complaint to university and other officials, asking them to take file sharers off their networks.
'The service seems to be an effective new ally for the recording industry but a growing headache for colleges. Until this semester, most institutions processed only a handful of copyright-infringement cases involving students every year.'
Interesting. I'm willing to bet my University would simply neglect the notices if they're coming in at that frequency. One or two might have gotten action, but anybody who sends hundreds of nitpicky little notices that clearly do not comply with the requirements of the DMCA will simply be ignored. The University simply doesn't have time to deal with it.
(Oh, and I do disagree with the guy who said it's "close enough to the letter of the law". The DMCA clearly requires a certain format in its notification notices, including as the article said, signitures and addresses. Both are, if you think about it, importent. Without those two things, this notice is essentially coming from nobody, and even that nobody isn't willing to sign it. Why should anyone care? Of course, the company does this because they don't want to actually follow up on any of these notices... THAT would take too much time.)