Since he moved to Memphis in June, Derek has illegally downloaded more than 21 gigabytes of music and movie files to his personal computer. He said he doesn't feel guilty.
"Why should I feel bad? I've been exposed to recordings I never would've heard otherwise," said the 23-year-old graduate student. "They've gained a fan who could potentially buy t-shirts, full albums or tickets to a show if the artist ever comes to town. Directly or indirectly, they benefit."
The Recording Industry Association of America, a group of several hundred record labels, doesn't agree.
Data obtained from Institute for Policy Innovation shows global music piracy is a major monetary loss for the companies, workers and artists involved, totaling an average of $12.5 billion in workers' earnings, corporate income and tax revenue year.
Their reputation among music lovers has made it hard for many to muster up any genuine sympathy.
In the last five years, the RIAA's lawsuit program sued an estimated 35,000 people for illegally sharing songs and other material through peer-to-peer browsers like LimeWire, BearShare, Kazaa, Pirate Bay and others. Most of these cases settled for $3,000 to $11,000 per person.
The RIAA relaxed its efforts in August when it abruptly stopped suing people for sharing copyrighted material, vowing instead to work with Internet service providers who can cut access for repeat offenders.
"They're Web site still lists fines of up to $3,000 per song if you get caught sharing files," said Derek, who asked not to be identified. "They're crazy. I don't have $9 million just lying around."
Like Derek, many U of M students chose to download music despite the obvious risks.
Eddie Kruger, a sophomore media art major, said he's known several people who received pre-litigation letters from the RIAA.
"That's one of the reasons I started downloading everything off iTunes," Kruger said.
A drummer for the local band, Tripwire, he said it's important to realize people are going to get access to music files no matter what precautions are in place, and that any exposure is good exposure.
"If we were big, we would want to be a band that makes albums, but we'd adapt to both markets, or at least try our best," he said. "You've got to make your music available any way you can. We need to get with it."
Freshman history major Edward Dickenson also started out downloading from P2P Web sites, but now, he said, he makes do with the music he gets from friends and fraternity brothers at his Midland home.
"I was scared I'd end up going to jail," he said, blaming record companies as the main culprit behind RIAA assaults. "I doubt the artists even care. You can't download everything they have. You get one or two songs, decide you like them and go out and buy an album."
Notices first appeared in Tiger LAN labs in 2004. They warned students not to download music, movies or any file-sharing program while using The University of Memphis network, but some students still don't comply.
"Many times they just don't know what they're doing," said Ellen Watson, associate vice president for information technology.
In November of last year, Gov. Phil Bredesen signed a law requiring all public and private universities exercise "appropriate means" to ensure campus networks aren't being used to download copyrighted material. At The U of M, that means a two-fold filter system used to limit song-sharing.
If it looks like file sharing, shuts them down. It may look like the download is complete, but when you open it, the. One set that looks for patterns looking for copyright signatures, another looking for music and movies. We block your ability to release that to other people.
The RIAA is required to provide details of infringed material, as well as the date, time, and Internet protocol address for each individual attack. Because of the software in place at The U of M, Watson said officials have found no files have been shared beyond the university network.
Within their "walls," judicial affairs takes appropriate action.
"We get the complaints from either the Motion Picture Association of America or the RIAA, we investigate, notify the student, etc.," she said. "But as far as we can tell, we can't confirm that anything has been illegally shared from our network. The RIAA can see what they presume to be an illegal copy on a computer, but the programs we use won't let their origin be shared."
Watson said officials try to warn students not to attempt to illegally download any files from the university network. Prevention, she said, is always better than punishment.
"We talk about this in orientation and at number of venues, so it should come as no surprise to our students," Watson said. "We try to comply with the laws, but the RIAA has a very different perspective than I do."
In 2007, the RIAA announced a new "deterrence and education initiative" targeting college students nationwide. The new initiative replaced hasty lawsuits with pre-litigation letters sent to universities nationwide, asking administrators to forward the letters to unidentified accused students.
Most offered a deal in the form of a "reduced" settlement if the student comes forward and pays the non-negotiable amount (around $3,000) within 20 days of receiving the letter. If the student does not respond, then the labels file a traditional lawsuit. The Electronic Frontier Foundation reported that within a year, the RIAA had sent over 5,400 letters to 160 different schools.
Dean of Judicial Affairs, Dwayne J. Scott, said The University only deals with about 60 cases of illegal file sharing per fiscal year.
"From a disciplinary perspective, given the overwhelming number of computers and student traffic on our campus, I would say that's relatively small."
An underground movement to thwart the RIAA has also increased over the years. Driven by former dissatisfied customers, many sites, such as RIAA Radar, are growing in popularity.
The downloadable tool allows users to distinguish whether an album was released by a member of the RIAA. On its Web site, programmers encourage customers to be aware of music manufacturers just as they would organic produce or high end clothing.
"Knowledge is power, and knowing where the product came from can (and should) influence what you buy," the Web site warns.
Pablo Varela is a second year law student who said he found alternative methods to get new music. With a little research, he found Web sites like SoundBox and eMusic that, he said, are really affordable and provide a quality product.
"If you don't pay for it, it's essentially stealing. Yes, I think paying $.99 or $1.29 per song is ridiculous, but there's always going to be ways around it," he said. "I'm not cool with the RIAA - they're a bunch of freakin Nazis and there going to profit wherever they can squeeze a buck."
P2P companies, as a whole, are not illegal. The file sharing systems only come under fire when someone shares a copyrighted file without the author's permission. According to EFF, P2P networks comprise 45 percent of all Internet traffic.
In a recent study, the NPD Group, a marketing research firm, found that a poor economy played a negative role in overall music sales from 2007 to 2008. U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 acquired 19 percent less music in 2008 than they did the year before, with CD purchasing down 26 percent and MP3 download sales decreasing 13 percent. Network file sharing was also down 6 percent in 2008.
"Being a college student is hard enough," Dickenson said. "I don't download because I'm broke."
A graduate student in the Herff College of Engineering, Ryan Pickett, doesn't download music at all anymore.
"I don't have time and I don't know any good sites," the 26-year-old said. "If someone really likes the music they're going to buy [the artist's] merchandise, like CDs, shirts and concert sales. There's a lot of ways artists are going to make money off this."
Of course, he said, there is another option:
"Listen to the radio."
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In March, the RIAA laid off more than 100 people following several office closings. The company was rumored to merge with the IFPI, the European organization who recently won their battle with the peer-to-peer file-sharing system, Pirate Bay.
The four co-founders of the popular Web site were found guilty last week of assisting the distribution of illegal content online and have been sentenced to a year in jail and a $3.6 million fine.
