How does Dartmouth get notified about violations and are all notifications thesame?

Dartmouth receives two different types of notices, "take down" and "preservation". In an average month, Dartmouth receives about 50 notices. A take down notice is a communication that asks the College to notify an individual to stop sharing copyrighted materials. Computing Services forwards these notices to the individuals whose computers are involved and asks them to discontinue the infringing activity. Most people comply promptly.

A preservation notice alerts the College to a forthcoming subpoena that may be served. The subpoena asks the College to provide identifying information about a user of our network who has infringed copyrighted materials. Sometimes, following the preservation notice and prior to the subpoena, an early settlement letter is sent to the College from the copyright holder asking that it be forwarded to the individual infringing on the copyright. This allows the individual to work with the copyright holder to resolve the dispute before going through the legal system.