The University of Central Arkansas has implemented the necessary technology to battle illegal downloading and put in place reasonable punishment, but this was done without going over the top.

The Higher Education Opportunities Act of 2008 requires all universities to “combat the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials by users of the institution’s network,” according to uca.edu/legal/heoa_copyright.

The UCA administration took the best possible route for battling illegal downloading by inhibiting downloading on the network.

Interim Director of Information Technology Terry Brewer said the university has employed packet-shaping technology, which provides “a means of managing [the]network traffic flow in and out of certain portals, which allows improved efficiency of the network.”

Essentially, the IT department has made it impossible to complete a download, unless the user wants to wait for days.

All file sharing will not be cut, however, because not all of it is illegal. For example, faculty members legally share information in collaboration with each other.

The Higher Education Opportunities Act, which became law in 2008 but wasn’t enforced until July 1, doesn’t require universities to locate and punish students who illegally download, but requires universities to have a system in place for punishing students, and UCA has done so.

According to UCA Board Policy No. 412, students who illegally download something may face expulsion, as well as face copyright infringement laws that can result in up to five years in prison and fines as high as $250,000.

The only catch: UCA doesn’t have the technology to determine which students are illegally downloading.

A May 9, 2008, Log Cabin Democrat article reported that UCA was the “No. 1 recipient of Digital Millennium Copyright Act notifications in the entire country.”

Not a pretty title for UCA to win.

The article also reported that, while UCA was aware of the notifications, there was simply no way to determine which students were taking part in downloading because the technology required to identify students would cost the university several hundreds of thousands of dollars, and UCA didn’t have the money to purchase that technology.

UCA’s Internet system also made it hard to identify particular students because, according to the Log Cabin article, the system assigned computers a different IP address each time a student logged on to the network.

Although the university should enforce any new policy to its full ability, this is one instance where true enforcement would be too harsh and would not be fiscally responsible for UCA.

In this case, simply inhibiting students from downloading is a better decision. Spending several hundred thousand dollars would be a huge expense for the university, and it would probably result in the expulsion of hundreds, if not thousands, of students. It is likely other universities will use similar tactics, and the new technology will surely decrease the amount of illegal downloading on campus.