Copyright and Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Policy

In accordance with the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) of 2008, ArtCenter has adopted a policy on illegal sharing of intellectual property that prohibits students from engaging in copyright infringement. Any unauthorized distribution of copyrighted works is copyright infringement, pure and simple. While some peer-to-peer file sharing is perfectly legal if the work being shared is not copyrighted or is shared with the authorization of the copyright owner, all other unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material violates federal copyright laws.

The College currently employs network monitoring technology to manage network traffic and to ensure that the College’s network use is the result of legal purposes only. As such, you are expected to comply with requests from Information Technology (IT), if contacted, to ensure that the College’s network is utilized only for legal purposes.

Penalties for copyright infringement can include expulsion from the College and both civil and criminal penalties; anyone found liable for infringement may be ordered to pay either actual damages or statutory damages. For “willful” infringement, penalties increase substantially.

There are many legal alternatives to downloading music and video. Please see a current list of popular sites here.