Important Information Regarding Illegal File Sharing and Downloading February 27, 2013

Wayne State Employees:

This message is being sent by C&IT in accordance with the requirements of the federal law called the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA).

Save yourself from potential legal problems with large media industry organizations. Publishers of copyrighted material, such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry of America (RIAA) have been conducting an ongoing campaign to discourage copyright violations through file-sharing by searching through download sites. If you have set up your computer to share music, movies or software there is a good chance they will find you. If you are using Wayne State’s networks they contact us and tell us to tell you to delete the files, and we are required by federal law to comply. Although this is quite rare, they also have the right to sue you, and this can get very expensive very quickly. Accordingly, Wayne State strongly discourages the unauthorized sharing of copyrighted materials, including music and movies. 

Read more about this issue: 

http://computing.wayne.edu/policies/heoa_plan.php 

There are legal ways to download or otherwise acquire copyrighted material. A comprehensive list of these alternatives can be found at: 

http://www.educause.edu/legalcontent 

Thank you.

Joseph F. Sawasky
Chief Information Officer & Associate Vice President
Computing & Information Technology
Wayne State University
http://computing.wayne.edu