UC Davis Information & Educational Technology

Bits & Bytes

Be a Sharer, Not a Pirate!

Published in the Aggie on October 21, 2004

You’ve erased your last illegal MP3s and movies; now all you want to do is show a friend your latest graphic design project, share a PowerPoint presentation with your history class, and display your summer vacation photos — but file sharing is illegal, right? And if not, don’t you have to pay for it?

Wrong and wrong! Not all file sharing is against the law. If you’d like to distribute files that you have obtained legitimately, the answer is MyUCDavis, the campus Web portal. It’s time for you to get to know MySpace.

The lowdown on MySpace

  • Your space:
  • As a MyUCDavis user, you have 100MB of free storage. Log in to MyUCDavis (http://my.ucdavis.edu), select the “My Tools” tab, and click on “MySpace.”
  • Being exclusive:
  • By default, everyone can see your top-level folder (the one that contains all the other folders) and your “public” folder, but you can restrict access if you only want certain people to sees certain folders. First, you must set up access rights for the general public. Click on the folder for a list of options; choose one and click “Save.”
  • VIPs:
  • You can designate any MyUCDavis user as a “File Friend,” thereby giving him or her access to certain files. You can even let these friends copy files to your folders.
  • Form a club:
  • If you have a group of friends who need access to certain files, such as those used in a class project, you can also create a “group” list and give this group access to a specific folder. Only 15 groups or “File Friends” can have access to each folder, so creating a group lets you share with more people than if you were to add each one separately.
  • For instructions, click the “More help…” link to open a comprehensive guide to MySpace.

UC Davis file sharing policy

Although your audience is limited, you must still respect copyrights when you put files on MySpace. Practicing legal file-sharing has become increasingly important in the last few years as companies have stepped up their efforts to end piracy. Subpoenas are often issued to Internet Service Providers (like UC Davis) to collect copyright violators’ names; if UC Davis receives a subpoena, it will do its best to contact individuals before identifying them, but the campus must respond to every lawful claim.

  • If copyrighted material has been traded illegally on your computer – even if a visitor used your computer to do so – an Area Conduct Coordinator will meet with you to determine your level of responsibility.
  • If you are found responsible, you will receive a formal warning from Student Housing and your name will be recorded with Student Judicial Affairs. In the meantime, your port will be disabled and may remain disabled for 7 days or more after the matter is resolved.

The future of freebies (and cheapies):

If you’re interested in cheap or free music, software, and movies, there are many legal options:

Music

  • Internet Radio: LAUNCH Music (http:// launch.yahoo.com) & Live365 (http://live365.com) are two of many online radio stations that stream music from various genres.
  • Songs a la Carte: Many services offer individually-downloadable songs for under a dollar; Napster, iTunes Music Store, and MusicMatch usually charge 99 cents per song.
  • Subscription Services: Services like Rhapsody (http:// listen.com) let you stream an unlimited amount of music for $9.95 per month.

Software

  • Free trials: Download.com and many other file-sharing Web sites allow you to try as many programs as you like for free trial periods lasting from one to several months.

Movies

  • Online Movie Rentals: Netflix (http:// www.netflix.com) is one of many online movie rental services. For a monthly fee, you can rent as many movies as you like and keep them however long you wish.

The days in which online piracy flourished may be coming to an end, but now we have much better options. For more information, check out the file sharing page on the Student Computing Guide at http://scg.ucdavis.edu/filesharing.cfm.

This column is provided to you by the student writers of Information and Educational Technology. For questions and comments, please contact ietpubsjr@ucdavis.edu.

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