It may, however, be legal to loan your software to a friend temporarily as long as you do not keep a copy to use concurrently. Lack of copy-protection does NOT constitute permission to copy software in order to share or sell it. Software acquired by colleges and universities is usually licensed. The licenses restrict how and where the software may be legally used by members of the community. This includes, but is not limited to, software installed on all media hard disks, floppy disks, tapes, CDs, software distributed by a campus lending library, and software available on a campus mainframe or network.
Some institutional licenses permit copying for certain purposes.
Consult your campus authorities if you are unsure about the use of a particular software product. It is illegal for a faculty member or student to copy software, for distribution among the members of a class, without permission of the author or publisher. Software available through institutional site licenses or bulk purchases is subject to copyright and license restrictions, and you may not make or distribute copies without authorization. This permission is explicitly stated in the documentation or displayed on the computer screen. The developer of shareware generally asks for a small donation or registration fee if you like the software and plan to use it.