All Marcos Garcia wanted to do was watch Inception.

Instead of renting or purchasing the film, the freshman undecided major decided to download the film illegally onto his computer using a torrent program called uTorrent.

Shortly after the film was downloaded, he noticed his Internet connection was no longer working. He brought his laptop to ResTech to see what the problem was, and was informed that the university knew about his illegal activity and suspended his NIU network access.

During the spring 2011 semester, the Office of Community Standards and Student Conduct (OCSSC) has received six reports of alleged violations of NIU’s Acceptable Usage Policy, said OCSSC Assistant Director Brian Glick in an email interview.

How students get caught illegally downloading copyrighted material may initially have nothing to do with the university at all.

Movie studios, record companies or any other entity that owns copyrighted material can hire a third party company that scans networks for illegal peer-to-peer contact, said Jim Fatz, NIU Information Security and Operations director.

“We get a copyright infringement notice,” Fatz said.

ITS then uses the Internet protocol address of the computer that was used to download the copyrighted material and figures out who was logged into the network.

“We play the middle man and find out through our logs,” Fatz said.

This type of situation is most common, but ITS does proactively search for illegal downloads by monitoring the network for an anomaly of traffic, Fatz said.

Fatz said the most commonly illegally downloaded files are TV series, movies, music and video games.

What happens after a student gets caught depends on their past record.

“First-time offenders of the NIU Acceptable Usage Policy meet with a staff member from ITS, review the policy and sign a form indicating their review and understanding of the policy,” Glick said. “First time offenders are not put through the NIU student conduct process, but meet strictly with ITS staff.”

Glick said repeat violators of the NIU Acceptable Use Policy are subject to meeting with OCSSC for adjudication.

Glick said loss of Internet access is determined on a case-by-case basis. Fatz said that network access might be suspended based on how long the student takes to respond to the notice of their policy violation.

Just because the matter is closed from a university standpoint does not mean the issue will go away entirely.

The third party company that first discovered the illegal download always reserves the right to file a civil suit against the offender, Fatz said.

Garcia said he regrets downloading the film, and was unable to connect to the Internet for over a week.

“It was a major inconvenience,” Garcia said. “I shouldn’t have done it.”

Glick said the best way for students to avoid any repercussion for possible violations is simple prevention.

“Students should ensure that the programs on their computer for playing music or video files have the peer-to-peer file sharing properties set in such a way that will prevent unauthorized transmission of the copy written material,” he said. “Students can take their computer to the ITS contact center or ResTech… for assistance in ensuring that the peer-to-peer file sharing properties are set appropriately.”