The University of Wisconsin – Green Bay is a strong proponent of copyright law and other protections for intellectual property rights.    However, illegal file sharing is an issue for the campus and others throughout the country.  During the 2008/09 academic year, the University received over 200 notices of copyright infringement from the recording industry.  These notices were directed at over 130 students.  Due to the large number of incidents, the University has revised its Campus Policy on Copyright Infringement

The RIAA, MPAA, and other industry groups actively search the Internet for persons who are making files available for sharing.  If they discover a computer located on campus that is doing this, the campus will receive an infringement notice.  If infringement notices are received that are traced back to your computer or your wireless router, you will lose network privileges for not less than seven days (first notification) and up to thirty days or more (for second and subsequent notices).   For second or subsequent offenses, you will be required to meet with the campus Judicial Affairs Officer before your network access will be restored.  Copyright infringement can result in other non-academic discipline as well.

Students who allow others to use their wireless routers should realize that they are responsible for any network traffic that goes through their router.  By default, most wireless routers will allow anyone to use the device to access the network. 

Students must be aware of the legal action they may face for copyright infringement.   Numerous students across the nation have been sued, found guilty of infringement, and been ordered to pay damages exceeding $100,000.  A recent case in Massachusetts resulted in a student being ordered to pay damages of $675,000 for sharing 30 music titles.  Numerous other students have been offered settlement opportunities for their infringement in the range of $3,000 to $4,000 as an alternative to being sued.  Over half of the persons offered settlement opportunities have settled with the recording industry.  Copyright infringement is a serious issue to the recording industry and to the University.  Copyright infringement can be a costly issue to you.

For additional information on downloading, please consult the Campus Downloading site and respectcopyrights.org web sites.

Students are encouraged to use legal commercial file download sites including:

Amazon (http://www.amazon.com)
iTunes  (http://www.apple.com/itunes/download)
Napster (http://www.napster.com)
Netflix (http://www.netflix.com)
Rhapsody (http://www.rhapsody.com)

Please note that there are some other Internet sites that charge a monthly or yearly access fee to access their site to share or download files that will result in you violating copyright laws if you download or upload files to the site.   When selecting sites, your should carefully review their “terms of service” to make sure that the site abides by copyright law.