This US College Is Fining Students Who Pirate Content On Its Network

Australian universities must be a great place for pirates. All that dedicated fibre backhaul makes dropping into class and torrenting your favourite shows makes learning way more appealing. One college has become sick of students stealing content, however, and has pledged to start fining students.

Louisiana State University put out a message in on its student news website this week that it won’t be treating piracy lightly at the school.

LSU will now be tracking DMCA complaints to track down offending students, and will attempt to rectify the bad behaviour with a series of measures.

First-time offenders illegally downloading files on LSU networks will see their network access restricted for all of their devices. The only way to restore access is to do a course on illegal file-sharing, a quiz and a DMCA incident report with the IT department.

Second-time offenders will find themselves with a fine of $US50 for their piracy offences which, for a uni student, is actually a fair chunk of change.

Furthermore, the school will record the piracy punishment on a student’s permanent record, which may become “harmful for a student’s career” according to the University.

The university gets around 20 complaints a month under the DMCA.

Would you buy into this sort of anti-piracy scheme? Tell us in the comments. [LSU via TorrentFreak]

Image via Shutterstock


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