According to the US Copyright Office, copyright infringement is defined as “when a copyrighted work is reproduced, distributed, performed, publicly displayed, or made into a derivative work without the permission of the copyright owner.”

Mountwest Community & Technical College requires all faculty, staff, and students to adhere to all standards that govern copyrighted material, software licensing, and other intellectual property.

The use of Peer to Peer (P2P) file sharing is used primarily for the illegal distribution of copyrighted material.  These networks are notorious for the spread of malware, viruses, trojans, spyware, and various types of adware.  Besides the legality issues raised by their use Mountwest’s office of Information Technology strongly discourages their use and will suspend and/or revoke the ability of users to access network resources when they are detected.  P2P networks also have led to data breaches and identity theft as unprotected systems leave information open and accessible to these networks.

Violation of copyright laws and failure to adhere to IT Acceptable Usage can lead to loss of privileges as well as expulsion from school and/or termination of employment.

Please visit links below for more information:

IBOG Information Technology Acceptable Use Policy

(https://www.mctc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/mctc_ibog_policy-policy_no_I-1.pdf)

Information Technology Acceptable Use

(https://www.mctc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Procedure_IT_Acceptable_Use_201103.pdf)