Consequences of file sharing at UC San Diego

Consequences of file-sharing at UC San Diego

It explains feelings of two people who had used peer-to-peer file sharing. First, they didn't know what they are supposed to do.

The two main facts are:

• Sharing copyrighted material with other users on the internet through peer-to-peer programs is illegal under Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
• More than half of people who received copyright violations at UCSD were not aware their P2P program was distributing files.

She says that anything is copyright is illegal and we have to pay for it. People don't realize that universities are targeted and copyright that organization are looking for students. We can find other ways to copyright material legally like I tunes.
Consequences outside UCSD are heavy :

• paying civil damages between $750 - $15000 per violation
• imprisonment of up to 5 years and fines up to $250000

Consequences at UCSD :

• Internet access terminated
• Creation of disciplinary record
• A meeting with the dean
• Mandatory attendance of a copyright infringement class

According to my student's experience, I find it normal to be punish when you commit a sort of crime. Copyright files is like steal something from the author. Because of university have a high-speed for internet, a lot of people think that they could download without thinking about consequences. But as it is said in the video, copyright organization looking for students especially. Take megaupload for example, at the beginning it was a website where we can share files and people transformed it in illegal thing with movies or series. However, copyright is not only share files illegally, when you take a sentence which comes from website or a book if you don't add where it comes from it is also illegal. So we can say that copyright organization can be tolerant about it because they can't be everywhere.

I find this video really interesting because in it, it is not especially two people who know that they make something illegal. The girl said that she lend her laptop to her friend and this friend copyright. In a way, it is not her fault.

I think students have to control themselves about copyright, they just have to precise where information come from. Everyone has copyright once, pretending that one sentence or paragraph is from them.