Sharing copyrighted music, movies, and games is against the law and K-State policy.
The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 makes it the responsibility of the university to educate K-Staters about the dangers of illegally sharing files through Peer-2-Peer (P2P) networks.
To help protect K-Staters from lawsuits and to abide by this mandate, K-State’s IT security team created a new website and an informational handout (PDF) to inform students, faculty, and staff.
What is Peer-2-Peer?
Peer-2-Peer, or P2P, is a method of sharing files between two or more people over the Internet. A variety of software programs can facilitate this sharing — LimeWire, eMule, and BitTorrent, to name a few. Inherently, the use of these programs is not illegal, but the majority of the time these programs are found on campus they are being used to download copyrighted material without authorization. As a result, most of these programs are prohibited by policy and have been blocked from use on the K-State network.
What’s wrong with downloading music?
There’s nothing wrong with downloading music, movies, or software from the Internet as long as it is acquired legally and from a legitimate source. P2P software generally does not allow for either of these safeguards.
Without paying for the content, you are in violation of not only K-State policy, but also federal copyright laws. In addition, there are numerous computer viruses hosted by file-sharers, masquerading as popular music or movie files. When you download the latest tunes, you could infect your computer with a nasty virus.
What happens if I get caught?
Violating K-State IT policy can lead to a full range of sanctions that include the suspension of access to network resources or other university discipline.
Infringers are also subject to serious civil and/or criminal liabilities. The recording, motion picture, and software associations actively search the Internet, including K-State’s network, for illegal file sharing under the auspices of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). They have successfully sued many people or settled out of court for substantial sums of money.
Criminal penalties for violation of federal copyright law include fines up to $1 million and a maximum jail sentence of 10 years.
What are the alternatives?
There are a variety of legal alternatives to file-sharing programs. Some examples:
- Apple’s iTunes
- Amazon’s MP3 Store and Video on Demand Store
- Walmart MP3 Music Downloads
- 7 Digital
- Napster (by Best Buy)
- eMusic.com
- Rhapsody (by Yahoo!)
What’s the bottom line?
Don’t download files illegally! It has multiple security risks. It’s a violation of K-State policy. It’s against the law.
| The legal alternative to illegal file sharing is simple — buy the product! |
