About Copyright

An important part of the OSCR mission is using technological resources to help students successfully complete their course work. Often, students use multimedia that they've found online to illustrate a concept in a paper, presentation, or project, and they turn to OSCR for guidance on adhering to Fair Use guidelines. This webpage will help you determine what you can legally use and what you should avoid using without first obtaining permission from the copyright holder.

We at OSCR are very concerned about the issues of illegal peer-to-peer (P2P) downloading and copyright infringement. We're not gonna sugar-coat it: illegally downloading copyrighted materials is stealing. Owners of copyrights are very aggressive in their pursuit of violators and The University of Arizona takes it very seriously when there are allegations of illegal file sharing using university networks and computers.

We know the issue is a confusing one with lots of legal gray areas. To help you understand the basics a little better, we've compiled some information we think will make the whole thing a lot clearer:

But if you're ever stumped about whether what you want to do is legal or not, just STOP what you're doing and contact us. You've got a friend in OSCR: our staff wants to help keep you out of trouble. If we don't know the answer, we'll put you in touch with people who do.

	Free Music! And to help you get started down the righteous path of legally downloading tunes, we want to introduce you to Ruckus, an online music service available to ALL UA students for free. As long as you're a UA student with a UA email address, you can download to your computer from a library of over 3 million songs. To get started go, to the OSCR Ruckus Portal and register! Ruckus does not work with the Mac operating system or with certain mobile devices, such as iPods and downloads will only work as long as you're enrolled as a student.
	Royalty-free Music and Sound Effects for UA Student Projects UA also has an agreement with Killer Tracks allowing free usage of original music tracks in a variety of styles and genres as long as they're used only for coursework or in your portfolio of student work. Simply preview the collection in the "Network Music" catalog at http://www.killertracks.com/launchpage/KillerTracks/ and then check out theCD you need from OSCR's Multimedia Learning Lab. .
	If your project requires sound effects, you may also use Network Music Lirary's royalty-free sound effects collection. Audio clips are available as MP3 files at http://web.cfa.arizona.edu/soundeffects/ .

Music and sound effects from the Network Music Library are free to use in academic projects for classes and in your portfolio of student work. HOWEVER, if your project is going to be shown, broadcast, distributed, posted to the internet, or submitted to festivals or competitions, additional licensing agreements and/or fees may apply. You MUST contact Killer Tracks directly to discuss your rights and responsibilities and to obtain information on how the media should be credited in your project.

Please contact Nicole Gilley, UA’s Killer Tracks account executive, at ngilley@killertracks.com or 1.800.454.5537 X4981 for more information.

A easy to follow, step-by-step guide for accessing Killer Tracks music and Network Music sound effects can be downloaded at this location.

And... there are lots of other cool sites, featuring music, videos, and more. Many of these sites offer free, legal downloads: