Alpha Sigma

The Vice President's note to the Director of Academic Computing got right to the point:

Last night I learned that Alpha Sigma is running an AppleShare server with a disk mostly full of third party software. I just verified that it is available to the entire campus.

Unless they have campus wide licenses, which I doubt, either deliberately or through not knowing, they represent a serious set of license violations. Several issues:

1. Are we doing anything to tell students in the fraternities and the dormitories about software licenses and the issue of piracy?

2. Should someone write a note to Alpha Sigma?

3. Does the University have any liability in the matter? Are we protected in that Alpha Sigma has a house corporation that would be liable if vendors decided to get nasty?

The University had recently extended its campus network to dormitories and fraternities. Dormitory residents each got a network drop at no cost, but had to supply their own computers and Ethernet boards. Fraternities each got a network connection from the house to the campus at not cost, but had to do their own internal wiring and supply their own computers, tranceivers, and Ethernet boards.

The University purchased site licenses for basic network software, and provided it directly to students. The University developed software for University-specific applications, and distributed it directly as well. Students obtained some additional software by buying it commercially, in some cases through the campus computer store. Students obtained other software by downloading freeware and shareware from network files servers at the University and elsewhere across the campus, the country, and the world.