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Department of Engineering |
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Copyright Material Stored on Computers
All members of the Department should read the Computing Service's
page
concerning the responsibility that all members of the University have
to ensure that others' copyright is not enfringed.
Downloading copyright material without paying
the appropriate licensing charge is illegal as is making copyright
material available to others without the permission of the copyright
holder; this includes making available copies on a disk or over the network.
Before making copies of anyone else's material available on the web, it
is important to check the copyright position carefully and, if the
material is copyright, obtain appropriate authorisation from the copyright
holder. If in doubt about the copyright position, do not risk using the
material.
The University's Legal Services Office publish comprehensive guidance on
Copyright Compliance.
Copyright owners are becoming increasingly vigilant in seeking out infringement
of their copyright, often hiring specialist companies to trawl web sites
for them. Whilst the norm used to be that a rapid response to a request to
remove the copyright material from the server was sufficient, payment
for the use to date of the material is now commonly sought and may involve fees
of several hundred pounds. The Department would at minimum pass on these costs
and the cost of staff time dealing with the complaint but also,
as any such infringement constitutes a breach of the Department's
Rules on the use of computers, disciplinary action
may be taken.
Typical complaints cover a wide range of copyright material:
computer software, games, music, movies etc. In most cases the offending
material has been downloaded via peer2peer networks such as
BitTorrent, eMule and Gnutella, using programs which automatically
(and usually silently) advertise the newly made illicit copy to
others. The use of such programs on the Department's network is
prohibited.
