"The bulk of the evidence came from Tufts’ IT department, which said each incident was “well supported” from log files and database records. The evidence pointed to her computer over a period of several months, the department told the committee."<p>[Anecdote]<p>I was in a lab one evening doing homework when out of the blue, I started receiving dozens of emails with variations of the subject [0]. I was getting DMCA notices with thousands of dollars of fines for each one. They were accusing me of pirating music on the school's network, and the IT department forwarded them to the party that best matched the description in the DMCA. Some of the details in it included [1].<p>The problem with all of this was I never torrented on the school's network and the times the infringement took place were times I wasn't on campus since I lived off campus. When I brought this up with the IT department, they disregarded my complaint and said my laptop was identified as the source. When prodded for more information on which APs the device was connected to at that time, they refused to check.<p>The university has free legal council for students so I booked an appointment, explained my situation, and had proof myself and my laptop were not on campus during the time the infringement took place. They talked to the IT department and I was sent a short email saying the violations were routed to me by mistake and they were dropped from my record. The university dynamically allocates IPs to devices for blocks of time, and the infringing IP was allocated to me earlier in the day, but not during the offense. When they forwarded the emails, they only checked who had the IP first during the day.<p>I can't imagine how many other students might have been falsely accused of this over the years because of bad practices by the IT department.<p>[0]: 'Unauthorized Use of Copyrights RE: TC-be738249-d341-4a1d-ac11-9e66d285dfca ISSUE=23120 PROJ=7'<p>[1]: "Infringement Source: Torrent, Timestamp: 2015-09-15 03:01:00.0 GMT, Infringers IP Address: 129.21.89.206, Infringers Port: 18359"