Software Pirating on Campus Draws Legal Fire

Joyce Winslow
jwins@oregon.uoregon.edu

Recent incidents of software pirating on U.S. campuses are inviting legal crackdowns.

Last April, a UO graduate convicted of software copyright infringement while a student was fined more than $100,000 and sentenced to a year in prison (see the Register Guard report at http://www.registerguard.com/news/20010417/1a.copyrightcase.0417.html).

Electronic copyright infringement on other campuses is also drawing fire. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) recently warned Harvard University and the University of Connecticut, among others, that some people on their networks are violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by trading copyrighted movies through the Gnutella file sharing service (see http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-5641576.html?tag=tp_pr).

Anyone wishing more information about copyright infringement issues and acceptable use of campus computing resources should review the UOÕs Acceptable Use Policy document at http://cc.uoregon.edu/acceptableuse.html