Tempboy

I got this message from my IT services today.. regarding use of peer-to-peer in residence


"
Dear All,

Please cease and desist any and all Peer to Peer sharing in residence effective immediately. ITS is receiving an inordinate amount of official warnings and take-down notices from various governmental bodies and software houses, warning us of the redistribution by students of licensed software and copyright materials. Students need to understand that the student residence network is visible across the Internet and that copyright bodies regularly seek out the sources of the redistribution of their materials.

I would remind everyone that tools such as Kazaa are quite simply classified as a virus. Sharing out your hard disk on your personal computer to the entire Internet is a very reckless thing to do, and will certainly result in your computer being used by other individuals to launch denial of service attacks. Your computer will certainly be abused by others if you do these things, yet you will bear the legal responsibility.

These activities are a breach of the Universities acceptable use policy and are a breach of both Australian and International law. There are very serious legal penalties that apply to persons who breach copyright laws. Each individual who engages in the sharing of these materials is separately liable for participating in the distribution of the copyright material.

Any persons who are sharing out copyrighted materials of any kind for general redistribution will have their network access privileges stopped immediately. Please be sensible, stop this activity at once.

You have now been officially warned.

Yours Sincerely,

"

So... what do you guys think. Scare tactics, or valid threat?