Schools across the country have shown that they care about the issue, but each school has taken a slightly different approach to handling P2P traffic. Stanford, for instance, cuts off repeat P2P infringers and charges them an increasing amount of money to reconnect. After three "strikes," students have to cough up $1,000 to get back on the network.
The University of Colorado-Boulder has a similar graduated response strategy for dealing with P2P complaints, and after three strikes, students are off the network. But the school imposes no reconnection fines, and keeps no record of complaints if students can show that they are unfounded.
Ohio University laid down a blanket ban on P2P apps on campus, legal uses be damned (which generated a less-than-compelling editorial from a member of Congress).
University of Minnesota officials tell Ars that their preferred response is to tell students what's legal and what is not, then set per-dorm bandwidth limits that are high enough for comfortable student use, but low enough that the university's fat pipe won't turn into a superhighway for every P2P system on the planet.
Other schools have taken a more confrontational approach to dealing with content owners. The University of Wisconsin-Madison, for instance, last year refused to pass along RIAA pre-litigation letters. But even UW-Madison passes along more traditional takedown notices, and the school's Appropriate Use Policy says that "illegal downloading, distribution, copying of copyrighted materials or other activities that violate copyright law are strictly prohibited."
