HEOA Press Release

Impulse Point Safe•Connect NAC Enables Colleges and Universities to Quickly and Easily Comply with Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) Mandates

Entertainment Industry Trade Group MPAA Reminds Schools to Protect Against Copyright Infringement

TAMPA, FL – December 17, 2010 –The entertainment industry this month marked another chapter in its ongoing effort to prevent illegal sharing of copyrighted material on college and university campuses. In a letter from its legal team, the Motion Picture Association of American (MPAA) notified school presidents of their obligations under the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) to reduce illicit peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing on campus.

For schools seeking help with HEOA compliance, the SafeConnect network access control (NAC) solution from Impulse Point provides a comprehensive resolution for P2P file sharing concerns. SafeConnect can play a strategic role in any institution’s response to the HEOA mandates, which went into effect earlier this year, and require that colleges and universities implement:

• An annual disclosure to students describing copyright law and campus policies related to violating copyright law.
• A plan to “effectively combat the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials” by users of its network, including “the use of one or more technology-based deterrents”.
• A plan to “offer authorized alternatives to illegal downloading”.

Already widely deployed in some of higher education’s most complex, dynamic and scalable networks, Impulse Point’s SafeConnect is the NAC solution of choice for institutions such as the University of California, Los Angeles – cited by EDUCAUSE as an “HEOA role model.” SafeConnect is also in use on the campuses of other file sharing compliance leaders such as Southwestern Oregon Community College (SOCC) and Troy University.

“Napster may be a distant memory, but students still know how to find digital content without paying for it. A few years ago, we were getting three or four complaint letters every week from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) telling us to get into compliance with copyright rules. We knew we needed to find a way to control illegal P2P file sharing across our network. It wasn’t difficult to decide that SafeConnect was the right choice for us. We have not had a single violation notice since installing SafeConnect NAC!” said an official at Troy University.

On the SOCC campus, administrators have taken a proactive approach to HEOA compliance. The IT department has deployed SafeConnect to actively block and quarantine any devices running illegal P2P software. They are also using SafeConnect to send out broadcast messages regarding illegal P2P file sharing as appropriate.

“Peer-to-peer file sharing used to be a problem for us and, like many schools we received our share of notices of student violations from the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America). While we remain committed to giving our students the access they need for a rich and dynamic learning experience, we also take seriously our obligations under the HEOA law. SafeConnect has allowed us to meet these dual goals and virtually ‘slam the door’ on illegal file sharing,” said John Taylor, network engineer at Southwestern Oregon Community College.

As a component of its comprehensive NAC solution, Impulse Point SafeConnect helps colleges and universities comply with the HEOA mandates by:

• Informing the student community through presentation of Acceptable Use Policies (AUP). Students must agree to comply with AUP, including the policies on illegal peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, as a condition of gaining access to the campus network.
• Prohibiting the use of P2P file sharing programs on the network. Should students attempt to use specific P2P programs, SafeConnect can immediately warn or block access in real time depending on the school’s philosophy.
• Educating students through an automatic webpage of links to websites that provide legal alternatives.

SafeConnect also can provide real-time and historical data that can be used to respond to any MPAA or RIAA violation notices that may be received by providing the school with the ability to correlate IP addresses and dates with the MAC address for the device and the associated user identity.

“Each school has a different approach for how to comply with the HEOA mandates. With SafeConnect, we offer schools a flexible solution to quickly and easily automate their own individual policies that help address these important mandates,” said Dennis Muley, president of Impulse Point.

Other Resources

• For information regarding complying with the mandates of HEOA with Impulse Point SafeConnect, please visit: http://www.impulse.com/heoa.php.
• For complete case studies highlighting Impulse Point customer success stories, please visit: www.impulse.com/literature.php.
• For the full MPAA letter and list of HEOA “role model” schools, please visit the EDUCAUSE website: www.educause.edu/Resources/Browse/HEOA/34600.
• For more information about the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, please visit the US Department of Education website: www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/leg/hea08/index.html.