The allure of blazing fast Internet speed and sheer boredom drives many college students into a file-sharing frenzy once they arrive on campus with shiny new laptops just waiting to be filled with music and movies. However, questions of the ethics and legality of student downloads, as many students understandably prefer to download free pirated files rather than purchase their files, has caused the RIAA to close in on college campuses across the nation.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been cracking down on student downloads since illegal file sharing first became a problem with the birth of Napster in 2001. The organization uses MediaSentry, an online copyright enforcer, to write scripts that automatically searches through the buzzing file-sharing World Wide Web for the names of copyrighted songs and the IP addresses of those illegally sharing those songs. When students use file sharing platforms like torrents, they expose their IP information, and thus their addresses, to the masses. MediaSentry simply copies down that information and forwards it to RIAA, which then sends a notice to the offending person or even school network. In 2007, two Boston University students were charged with online music piracy by the RIAA, but the judge ultimately ruled that the university could not reveal the names of the students involved to the record companies that were suing. Though these students avoided potentially thousands of dollars in fines, the case is a scary reminder that the RIAA is indeed targeting students downloading at school. If caught, individuals could pay up to $150,000 per illegally downloaded song, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s The Tech.
Yet, despite these dangers, students continue to share files, both legally and illegally, through clients like uTorrent, DC++, and LimeWire. To lessen the chances of legal ramifications, some universities have considered a campus-wide "subscription" to a file-sharing network, according to an article in Wired. The idea, proposed by a few major music labels in 2008, suggests that universities pay a base fee that would allow students on their network to download all the files they want without fear being sued by the RIAA. The fee would pay for potential losses sustained by the mass file sharing, and the universities could then tack that fee onto student tuition so that the school itself would not have to pay. With this proposal, record labels could rake in millions and students could download all they want without fear of being reprimanded. Though no university has implemented such a plan yet, it could be the face of college-based file-sharing in the not-too-distant future.
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