August 2012

Freshman Picnic

email to all students, August 29, 2012

Dear Students:

We would like to remind you about Duke’s copyright infringement policy, in accordance with provisions of the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA).

Peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing programs (e.g. BitTorrent) are very popular for sharing large files across the Internet.  While file sharing is not illegal, you should be aware that there are two problems with these popular programs:

1) If the files being shared are protected by copyright (as the vast majority of songs, movies, books, and software are), sharing them is a violation of federal law, according to section 106 of the Copyright Act (Title 17 of the United States Code) and can result in criminal and/or civil penalties.

2) They consume excessive amounts of Duke's available bandwidth, resulting in slower network speeds and interfering with other uses of the network.

When Duke receives a takedown notice from a copyright holder, we are obligated to pass the notification along to the individual associated with the IP address at the time of the infringement.  In the past, college students have been the targets of lawsuits by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and others for copyright violation, and many have paid large fees to settle those lawsuits and avoid going to court.

Penalties for copyright infringement include civil and criminal penalties, ranging from “statutory” damages affixed at not less than $750 and not more than $30,000 per work infringed.  For “willful” infringement, a court may award up to $150,000 per work infringed and can also impose criminal penalties, including imprisonment of up to five years and fines of up to $250,000 per offense.  Earlier this week a judge upheld a $675,000 judgment against a Boston University student for sharing two-dozen songs.

For detailed information about legal sources of online content, including Duke's procedures for copyright infringement complaints and other legal and related notices, see: https://studentaffairs.duke.edu/dos/riaa-file-sharing.

Complying with copyright law is an essential part of the Duke Community Standard and of being a Duke student. It is also the right thing to do as a member of an intellectual community.

Larry Moneta, Vice President for Student Affairs
Tracy Futhey, Vice President for Information Technology

RALEIGH, NC–The North Carolina Humanities Council has awarded North Carolina State University’s African American Cultural Center and the Africana Studies Program a grant to present a film and humanities discussion of the documentary, Infiltrating Hollywood: The Rise and Fall of the Spook Who Sat by the Door (2011). This project is made possible by funding from the North Carolina Humanities Council, a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Infiltrating Hollywood: The Rise and Fall of the Spook Who Sat by the Door is an independent documentary on the controversial 1973 film, The Spook Who Sat by the Door. The film, based on Sam Greenlee’s breakthrough novel, The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1969), is widely hailed as a cult classic and one of the most important black productions of the era. The story focuses on a black man who was trained as a CIA agent. Greenlee used the word “spook” as a double entendre; the word was slang for “spy” and a term used to refer to Black Americans. The “Spook,” though trained as a government operative, eventually uses the racist perception of Black inferiority and successfully challenges the oppressive forces in his community. Greenlee wrote a screenplay based on his novel and worked with actor, director and producer, Ivan Dixon, to produce the film. Dixon, who graduated from Lincoln Academy in Gaston County, NC and from North Carolina Central University in 1954, directed the film.

Infiltrating Hollywood focuses on how Greenlee and Dixon used the film industry’s biased expectations of black-themed films in the 1970s by cutting their dailies to look like a Blaxploitation in order to obtain from a major distributor to finish the film. United Artists took the bait and was dismayed at the final production of the film; however, the company was bound by contract to release the film. Instead of images of pimps and prostitutes perpetuated by Hollywood during the 1970s, the film portrayed black people who were willing to fight for their beliefs to achieve freedom from oppression.

The North Carolina Humanities Council grant is a part of a unique Triangle and Triad consortium -- the Southern Black Film and Media Consortium -- involving the NCSU African American Cultural Center; the NCSU Africana Studies Program; the UNC Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History; the Mary Lou Williams Black Cultural Center at Duke University; film/media/Africana Studies programs at Bennett College, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Shaw University, St. Augustine’s University, and North Carolina Central University; and the Hayti Heritage Center. The program is scheduled for September 29th, at 5:00PM at the Hayti Heritage Center and will feature the author, Sam Greenlee, as well as Dr. Joseph Jordan, Dir. Sonja Stone Center, Dr. Charlene Register (UNC), Dr. Yvonne Welbon (Bennett College), Dante James, Asst. Director of the African American Cultural Center, and Dr. Sheila Smith McKoy the director of the African American cultural center (both of NC State).

The screening and discussion is the first event organized by Southern Black Film & Media Consortium (SBFMC). The SBFMC welcomes individuals, organizations, and institutions who are interested and/or engaged in the study, craft, production, critique, and distribution of film and media focused on African, African-American and African diaspora cultures and experience. The SBFMC also welcomes film enthusiasts and those interested in the aesthetics of film and media.

The screening and humanities discussion of, Infiltrating Hollywood: The Rise and Fall of the Spook Who Sat by the Door is free to the public. The Hayti Heritage center is located at 804 Old Fayetteville Street, Durham, and NC.

For more information call the Hayti Heritage center at 919-683-1709 or the NCSU African American cultural center at 919-515-1451.

Duke Dining is committed to fulfilling many goals, one of which is providing access to nutritional data. To help achieve that goal Duke Dining has been selected as one of a few universities to pilot a nutrition program at Marketplace and the West Union. Please bear with us as with any new program there are a few bugs to be worked out and please let us know how the new nutrition program is working for you. 

If you have any questions or comments please contact Duke Dining at 919-660-3900 or dining@duke.edu.