Harvard Crimson Gives A Positive Review Of The Movie Industry’s Approach To Illegal Downloading

Harvard’s student newspaper on Monday endorsed the way that the movie industry has approached the phenomenon of illegal downloading at university campuses, calling it “a sensible compromise.”

The Motion Picture Association of America has recently sent thousands of letters to higher education institutions throughout the United States to remind them that under the Higher Education Opportunity Act, they must have a written plan to “effectively combat the unauthorized distribution of copyright material by users of the institution’s network.”

The Harvard Crimson’s editorial board says that the MPAA’s approach is a balanced one because it looks to both individuals and the university’s network operators to play their parts to stop the infringement.

It praised the university’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ “Three Strikes and You’re Out,” network access policy that bans repeat offenders from the university network for a year. This includes access from “all devices owned or registered by the student.”