Newswise — In an age when universities across the country are noticing a rapid increase in copyright complaints against their students for illegal file sharing, Missouri University of Science and Technology is seeing just the opposite.
Information technology systems security analyst Karl Lutzen believes the reason for the drop is the unusual way the university regulates its students' use of the campus network " an online file-sharing quiz all campus users must ace before downloading or uploading files to any peer-to-peer network.
Users must pass the test with a perfect score every time they request peer-to-peer access. In exchange they are granted six hours of access. No more than eight uses per month are allowed. Unused access requests can accrue to a total of 20.
The quiz includes questions about the difference between copying a CD and downloading music, and what types of works are protected by copyright.
Questions change, as do their order, each time the quiz is accessed. The theory is, Lutzen says, that students could memorize the questions, but because they would still need to pay attention to how the answers are arranged, they would end up learning the material anyway.
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