My ninth grade physics teacher always said that for every action, there was a consequence. And in this case, USC students must now come to terms with their misbehavior.
Today the Daily Trojan announced that the school has agreed to help the RIAA catch illegal downloaders - ostensibly students - on campus. The school provided access to information about how their networks are used, and rightfully so, but USC has been put in a difficult position. Do you protect your students or do you obey the law? Kind of a catch-22.
Right or wrong, USC will soon deliver letters to 20 students detailing their downloading misbehavior and offering them a settlement. However, even taking the settlement is bad news because the RIAA may fine you up to $150,000 per infringement, so for every song (file) swapped. Even if you do manage to avoid going to court, it will be expensive regardless.
The record labels have to deal with new and creative downloaders every day. For example, in Japan downloads to mobile devices total almost 350 million while downloads to PCs are only about 23 million. Kids in Japan have already moved on and are downloading directly to their phones, and comparatively ignoring their less-portable desktop computers.
So through all of this, there are going to be 20 very unhappy college students tomorrow. But it all comes back to my personal adage: Why pay for something you can't use however you want, when you could get the exact same thing for free off a file-sharing program that is DRM free?
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