Is Downloading UIUC Mathematica Courseware Legal?

[Synesthesia]

Hello all,

Does anyone know anything about copyrighting? I have been downloading courseware 6.0 from math everywhere from the UIUC website (there is a direct download link on the webpage). This is recently become an issue, should I be worried? The material costs money but my school provides it on its website, am I at fault?

Any help would be appreciated, I hope this is the right place to post this.
Thank you.

 

[fss]

They probably have a site license that allows them to distribute the software en masse. Your best resource for this kind of question would be to contact UIUC directly, as they will be privy to that information.

 

[Synesthesia]

I would contact them, put that would put me in a difficult situation ( I am encouraging downloading there instead of buying the courseware). I wanted to know the legal issues behind this before I contact any officials.
Fundamentally it seems that UIUC is distributing copyrighted material for free which is not my problem.

 

[jtbell]

They probably have a site license that allows them to distribute the software en masse.

And they probably have their server configured to accept download requests only from inside the uiuc.edu domain. So if you're a student at UIUC and are using one of their computers to download it, you're probably OK. You're probably not allowed to use the software for commercial purposes, or to distribute it to anyone else; and there may be other restrictions on what you can do with it.

 

[Ryker]

If there is a direct download link and you didn't have to hack into anything to get access to it, then you're good to go, so don't worry about it.

 

[deathnote93]

Dw, the school is providing it to you.

 

[AlephZero]

I think "copyright" is the wrong term here. What you are really talking about is "licensing".

There is no question about the copyright of the software. Most likely it belongs to the company that wrote it. You don't get any "share" of the copyright by buying the software. What you do get is a license to use the software. The license will usually have some restrictions attached to it (e.g you can install it on as many PCs as you like, but you can only legally use use it on one PC at at anyone time).

IF UIUC have bought a license that allows all their students to download and use the software, no problem. As #4 and #5 say, if you didn't have to hack into anything to get it, then it's going to be UIUC's problem if they are violating their license agreement, not yours.

Note this is not the same situation as (possibly illegal) peer-to-peer "software exchange" sites, because in this case I don't expect there is any dispute about who actually owns the software license. The only possible issue is whether UIUC are violating the license agreement, and they would be very stupid if they are doing that intentionally.

 

[Synesthesia]

Actually, students are required to buy the courseware for $25 dollars, so this was a mistake link on the their part. Furthermore, the teacher is thinking of giving everyone who used the free version (courseware 6) a 0 on the homework assignments.