When downloading music at school, students have a choice: Pay for it now, or risk a lawsuit and really pay for it later.
The Recording Industry Association of America has continued to crack down on illegal filesharing at universities. According to an RIAA press release, students get 25 percent of their music from illegal downloading.
Because such a large portion of illegally downloaded files comes from college students, the RIAA has sent thousands of more subpoenas to universities than it has in past years — Boston University received 164 notices in 2006, according to the RIAA.
These lawsuits are symbolic of the everlasting downloading controversy. Even though Napster and other widely known once-illegal servers have become legitimate music stores, many other free networks still pervade the Internet, offering illegal filesharing.
Many students continue to get their music off the web at no cost. But students should understand the consequences can be great.
The RIAA is sending subpoenas to the university as often as BU hands out housing violations. When BU receives these letters from the RIAA, it passes them along to guilty students.
A notice could mean a lawsuit, and court fees are very expensive. Usually, students settle for thousands of dollars instead of going to court.
Downloading music illegally isn’t worth the headache or cost of being caught. According to the Associated Press, the RIAA has sent subpoenas to students who were found sharing just one file.
And if students don’t pay for the songs they get from the Internet, they most likely will be discovered. The Information Technology Office monitors the bandwidth of all computers connected to its server.
But IT doesn’t want to have to police this type of activity. The university may send a warning to students whom it finds illegally downloading music, actually saving offenders from having to deal with the RIAA. But if students keep downloading illegally, the university will eventually give up trying to help them.
Despite any students’ wishful thinking, the RIAA will not give up. It will persistently punish more and more violators until filesharing is no longer a problem. If we stop, they will stop.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
