Office of Information Technology

Center for Instruction, Research, and Technology

Contact

Student Tech. Support
Student Computer
Support Center
Stalker Hall, Room 009
Phone: 812-237-8800

Campus Tech. Support
OIT Help Desk
Phone: 812-237-2910
888-818-5465
Email: it-help@indstate.edu

Administration
Phone: 812-237-8439
Fax: 812-237-4490

Address:
Gillum Hall, Room 103
Indiana State University
Terre Haute, IN 47809

Office Hours:
Monday - Friday
8:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

OIT Help Desk

File Sharing for staff/faculty

In reference to the University Handbook policy "File Sharing Programs University Owned Computers" (revised copy August 2009) Section V, page V-13, the following list of P2P file-sharing programs are not to be installed on any ISU owned computer:

eDonkey, Overnet, Shareaza, WinMX, BitTorrent, Limewire, Morpheus,eMule, Ares, BearShare, Kazaa, iMesh, FastTrack, Ares Galaxy, Gnutella, ANts P2P, Azureus, BitComet, BitTornado, BitTorrent 5, BitTorrent 6, Cabos, DC++, ExoSee, eDonkey2000, Freenet, KCeasy, FrostWire, giFT, µTorrent, MUTE, MLDonkey, Gnucleus, Kazaa Lite, gtk-gnutella, Warez P2P, Winny, AresWarez, Blubster.

You may not be aware the file sharing applications cause the following problems:

They waste your bandwidth: Not only will these programs share your downloaded songs and videos, but they can significantly slow performance of your own computer and impact network performance for the University as a whole.
They come bundled with adware or spyware: Many file-sharing applications come bundled with adware or spyware which automatically installed on your computer along with the file-sharing application. This software can monitor your activity, sending information to third-party vendors and advertisers on such things as what Web pages you browse or what searches you perform. Apart from privacy, concerns, these add-ons use your computer's system resources to operate and will affect performance. Depending on how much spyware and/or adware you have installed, this may be significant.
You could be sued: If you share files that you are not the copyright owner of, you are likely in violation of University policy and potentially subject to lawsuit by the copyright holder under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. You are responsible for understanding what constitutes legal use of music, movies, software, images, and other copyright works that you own or use. BY using these resources you agree to abide by the policies and guidelines set forth by Indiana State.

If a file-sharing program causes problems for the Indiana State network or such use results in allegations of violation of copyright, OIT is authorized to disconnect your computer from the network if you are in violation of University policy. In addition to potential civil action, you may face University disciplinary action for violating University policies. Procedurally, on a first offence the University, through the Office of Information Technology (OIT) notifies you, your direct supervisor, and Human Resources of the DMCA notice. You are then given 48 hours (2 work days) to take corrective action and/or to resolve the situation. On subsequent offences, your network privilege (all access) is removed pending appropriate disciplinary action. The loss of network privileges is serious and could easily render you unable to perform job functions.

ISU is committed to making you aware of legal options for downloading and sharing music, movies and other digital media. Please go to this list provided by Educause to find sources for legal downloads. Some of these resources make music available to you at no charge; others offer digital media at a reasonable cost.

Indiana State recognizes there are legitimate needs for file sharing activity and therefore does not block the legal use of this type of application. However, Indiana State does not permit illegal file-sharing and actually works to detect and block illegal downloads.

To learn how to share files at ISU, check out our Self Study Software Tutorial page on ISecure, a reliable and safe peer to peer file sharing program.