Illegal Sharing of Copyrighted Materials

This posting serves as official notice to all students, faculty, and staff that it is a violation of federal law and SCTCC policy to share and/or distribute copyrighted materials without the permission of the copyright holder.

Violators may be subject to civil and criminal prosecution under the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). See more information on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act at:
http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/

File sharing software is most commonly used to download music and other media. Many do not realize that this software may turn your personal computer into a server or an upload site, even if that was not your intent. Files on your network-connected computer may then be illegally shared with every other person connected to the Internet. It is imperative that the file sharing capability of these systems be disabled.

If you do not know how to disable this function, please contact the IT Services Help Desk in room 1-215.

Industry representatives aggressively monitor the Internet to discover incidents of illegal file sharing. When violations are discovered, they contact the network owner and/or the Internet Service Provider and demand that the offending device be disconnected from the network. To protect the user and SCTCC from responsibility under the DMCA or SCTCC policy, IT Services will disable network access to any machine for which a DMCA complaint has been received.

The Higher Education Opportunity Act requires all colleges and universities to offer legal alternatives to unauthorized downloading. This link to Educause includes all of the legitimate online services that they are currently aware of. No endorsement or evaluation is intended.

Thank you for taking this notification seriously.