It may, however, be legal to loan your software to a friend temporarily as long as you do not keep a copy. 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 applies to software installed on hard disks in microcomputer clusters, software distributed on disks 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. Rutgers University Computing Services has operated within these guidelines for many years, and we believe all other members of the University community should do so as well. A Guide to the Ethical and Legal Use of Software for Members of the Academic Community.