Illegal sharing of files or software puts you at risk of fines, disciplinary action, and even imprisonment.
It is illegal to distribute commercial works electronically, specifically recordings or audiovisual works per the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
A "commercial" work is one whose copyright owner or authorized representative intends to or already does sell, rent, perform, or exhibit under license.
- All UC networks are monitored.
Federal laws allow for fines up to $250,000 and imprisonment up to five years.
Over half of illegal downloads include malware.
Free and/or low cost safe alternatives to piracy do exist.
Sites with lists of links to where students can download digital works legally or at low cost:
All below links are provided without any guarantee, terms of service may change, this is not a complete list as services are offered at the discretion of service providers and may change throughout the year.
For example: Amazon Prime, HBO, etc... are services who have discounts for students but change their terms on a regular basis and thus we cannot list a stable URL. To find those search "student discount" + service name
- EDUCAUSE: Legal Sources of Online Content
- UCSB Library: https://www.library.ucsb.edu/research
- Free online classes from Harvard, MIT and several UCs (often with digital textbooks): https://www.edx.org/
- MIT Open Courseware (free textbooks and course materials, several UC professors have put their stuff up here if their course is in edx)
- ACM Digital Library: https://dl.acm.org/
- Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/
- Open Library: https://openlibrary.org/
- Spotify/HULU/Showtime Student Discount: https://www.spotify.com/us/student/
Additional information regarding copyright, including UC policies and legal issues, may be found at: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/copyright/