History Repeating; RIAA Goes After College Students

I'm sure we all recall a number of years back when the Recording Industry Association of America targeted teens in random regions of the United States for music file sharing, fining them hundreds to hundreds of thousands of dollars based on the number of songs they illegally downloaded.

There was an uproar. Kids were not merely charged these great fines but threatened with criminal charges as well. The websites that offered, assisted, and promoted this 'file sharing' however were not so targeted. Instead a number of them turned around and changed the websites to, a "pay for the song system", and thus profited.

I recently read an article in Rolling Stone, issue 1023, by Steve Knopper reporting that now, thousands of college kids are being targeted for the same offenses. Dorms have a particularly high volume for file sharing. For this reason the RIAA is going through the universities to get to the kids.

"...[The RIAA] sends letters to colleges listing IP addresses of computers the organization claims have been used to share music illegally. From there colleges are instructed to identify the students and pass along the letters. The letter encourages the recipient to make a quick settle via the new Web site p2plawsuites.com to avoid a future suit."

This effort encourages the targeted students to pay a few thousand dollars rather than some $750.00 per song, not to mention any number of costly court and lawyer fees.

So for us, college students, this sucks. If you've read my other blogs, you know I support buying the music. I believe that it encourages the artists to keep the art in the albums and the songs. Further, it supports local business, record shops, concerts, etc.. On the other hand, music sharing is a great way to learn about the new artists that are out there.

The problem, in my opinion is that the industry is being, well, a big fat jerk for lack of a better phrase. They are bullying people into paying an unjust amount of money. Punitive damages in this matter, to the music industry is not unreasonable, after all, those "jerks" have mortgages to pay, and families to support, just like the rest of us. Punitive damages, or however they prefer to define charging $750.00 for a song, that if purchased online would be $0.99, are effective in that they are step in solving the problem. The price you pay in the end makes a point to the rest of the file sharers out there, that this is a bad thing. However, did this work the first time? Well, they are doing it again, so it was clearly not entirely affective. Now they target a new group of people though, so perhaps there are just working there way through society, and earning a good amount of money while doing so.

This does not sound like a justified resolution to me. What I don't understand is why the RIAA does not target the websites. I understand that file sharing is quite simple, and may happen even if we did control every major music sharing website, but wouldn't it be more affective than sporadically going after random violators? I don't have the most knowledge on the subject, but am ever so curious...if you have it, give me some insight!