Sharing and downloading copyrighted music, movies, and games from the Internet without proper authorization is considered piracy-a
violation of federal copyright laws and K-State policy. In addition the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) have been successfully suing file sharers all over the United States.
Piracy refers to the illegal copying, distribution, or use of software, music, movies or any other media that can be digitally stored and transferred. Illegal piracy causes significant lost revenue for publishers, which in turn results in higher prices for the consumer.
Most of the piracy on the Internet is carried out using Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network applications such as Kazaa, eMule, BitTorrent and Gnutella clients like LimeWire.
While these programs can facilitate quick and easy sharing files, using them to share copyrighted files is prohibited by K-State policy and the law.
Four Categories of Piracy
K-State’s IT Usage Policy prohibits the use of IT resources
for illegal purposes, such as piracy of intellectual property. More specifically, K-State’s
P2P File Sharing Policy prohibits the use of P2P file sharing
applications illegal acquisition or sharing of music, movies, games, and the like. Consequently, P2P file sharing applications
commonly used for illegal purposes are blocked on K-State’s network using technology-based deterrents.
The bottom line is it’s against the law, it’s against K-State policy, it has other security risks (see “Additional Dangers” below), and the common P2P applications are blocked, so don’t do it!
For violating K-State IT policy, a full range of sanctions are available that include the suspension of access to network
resources or other appropriate university discipline, up to and including termination of employment and expulsion.
Infringers are also subject to serious civil and/or criminal liabilities. The RIAA, MPAA, Entertainment Software Association (ESA), and others actively search the Internet, including K-State’s network, for illegal filesharing under the auspices of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). They actively pursue infringers and 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.
K-State has specific procedures it must follow when notified of an alleged copyright infringement under the DMCA. After confirming the infringing activity, network access for the computer involved in the illegal activity is blocked and the infringement noticed is passed on to the owner of the computer.
In addition to the legal and policy issues related to downloading music from unauthorized sources on the internet, many new viruses
and worms also proliferate across P2P networks. It is possible to download a file that appears benign and end up with a malicious
program that takes control of your computer.
Not only are there malicious programs masquerading as downloadable files but sometimes the illicit file sharing programs themselves can cause problems. File sharing consumes shared bandwidth which can significantly slow down other Internet-related activities for you and others on the K-State network. Also, if the program is incorrectly configured, it may even share files on your computer that you never intended anyone else to see like bank records, personal information, or confidential University data.
The alternative to illegal file sharing is simple--Buy it!
Several services are available that allow you to pay for the music, movies or television shows on a per-item basis, or through an "all you-can-consume" monthly fee.
Most of these services include licenses with each song that allow you to copy the song to multiple listening devices and store it on your computer, for your personal use only. Furthermore, these pay-per-download services charge as little as 50 cents per song or a few dollars for movies and they have hundreds of thousands of selections in their catalogs.
Some of these sites include:
Criminal penalties and civil remedies for violation of Federal copyright laws are summarized in this Congressional Research
Services report:
There are several other sites that have more information on piracy and what you can do to keep from violating these laws:
Download this informational handout about Illegal Filesharing for K-Staters.