October 2006
To: All Students
From: "Manuel Gomez, Vice Chancellor Student Affairs" <studentaffairs@uci.edu>
Subject: Downloading and copyright

Dear UCI Students:

The Internet is an essential tool for both academic and everyday pursuits expanding and enriching our lives. Along with these benefits come challenges and responsibilities. One of the most critical is conforming to copyright laws.

Trading of copyrighted music, movies, games and software over the Internet is generally not legal. You must have the consent of the copyright holder to make copies.

There are some limited exceptions; however, these generally do not apply to copyrighted materials used 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.

Another reason to be very careful with file sharing programs is that the installation procedures for most enable default open access worldwide to various information on your system. Thus, the integrity of your computer and personal information can be compromised through illegal file sharing. Your computer should be configured to share only those materials you have the right to share and want to share, such as documents, photos, and music that you create.

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 free listening at a network-connected computer and the ability to purchase items for downloading onto portable players. 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. In addition to these services, there are several other legal sources of music and video on-line.

Please review UCI computer and network policy as well as the other references included below.

Manuel N. Gomez
Vice Chancellor Student Affairs

[1] UCI Legal Music site
http://www.vcsa.uci.edu/music/
[2] UCI Computer and Network Use Policy
http://www.policies.uci.edu/adm/pols/714-18.html
[3] UCI Copyright Policy Resources
http://www.nacs.uci.edu/policy/copyright.html
[4] 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