To: All UCI Students
From: Manuel N. Gomez, Vice Chancellor, Student Affairs
January 20, 2006
Dear UCI Students:
The Internet has become an essential tool for both academic and everyday pursuits, offering capabilities and opportunities that expand our horizons and enrich our lives.
Along with these benefits come challenges and responsibilities. One of the
most critical and visible of these is conforming to copyright
laws. I am writing to inform you of campus policy and your obligations as
a member of the UCI electronic community.
Though trading of copyrighted music, movies, games and software over the Internet has become commonplace using file sharing programs such as BitTorrent and eDonkey, it is often not legal to do so.
Making copies of copyrighted materials over the network is generally illegal unless you have the consent of the copyright holder. There are some limited exceptions however, these exceptions generally do not apply when a person shares copyrighted materials with others for entertainment purposes. Copyrighted material includes music, videos, games, movies, text and software.
UCI abides by the provisions of the federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which requires prompt response to claims of copyright infringement by copyright holders or their agents. If you download copyrighted materials without permission, you could lose network access, and/or be subject to UCI disciplinary action. Other consequences may include civil liability and even criminal prosecution.
To facilitate student access to legal sources of music on-line, UCI has entered into service agreements with both Cdigix and Mindawn. Cdigix http://www.cdigix.com/ offers UCI students a subscription service at $3.49/month. Mindawn http://www.mindawn.com/partners/uc/ provides free listening up to 3 times before purchase and the ability for UCI students to publish content they create.
Some believe that "recreational file sharing" is unlikely to be noticed. This is not the case. Copyright holders are significantly intensifying enforcement using automated scanning software to identify infringements, no matter how small. Civil settlements negotiated for individual file sharing copyright infringements routinely amount to thousands of dollars. Recent Congressional hearings have focused on such infringements by students with the prospect of legislation toughening the already serious criminal penalties for file sharing copyright violations.
Please be aware that most file sharing programs install on world wide sharing
by default. This means you could be sharing materials on the
world wide web without your knowledge.
To protect your own personal information and the integrity of your computer
as well as to comply with copyright laws, you should not install file sharing
software unless you configure it properly. It must be configured to share
only those materials you have the right to
share, such as documents, photos, and music that you create. Sharing files
on your system without proper attention to what is being shared -- and with
whom -- can easily allow personal information on your system, or even your
entire system, to be used in ways which can have serious consequences for
you.
Please review UCI computer and network policy as well as the other references included below.
Manuel N. Gómez
Vice Chancellor, Student Affairs
[1] UCI Computer and Network Use Policy
http://www.policies.uci.edu/adm/pols/714-18.html
[2] UCI NACS Copyright Policy Resources
http://eee.uci.edu/help/student/copyright/
[3] UCI Residential Network Services Computer Use Policy and
Connection Guidelines: Music, Movies, Software and other
Copyrighted Files
http://resnet.uci.edu/policy/connection_policy.asp#copyright
