http://tech.yahoo.com/blo...e-students

How would you like to get this email from your college kid, the one you're shelling out tens of thousands of dollars for to pay for his education?

"Hi Mom: The recording industry says I owe them $3,000 or they're going to sue me! Help!"

Help, indeed. As I wrote in a previous post, the Recording Industry Association of America is getting tough on illegal music downloads, and taking aim where free downloads are as common as Frisbees, college campuses.

The RIAA has sent letters to 50 Ohio University students telling them each to pay $3,000 for illegally downloaded music files to avoid lawsuits accusing them of stealing songs from the Internet, the AP reports. The association, which is stepping up its legal action on college campuses, has already sued more than 18,000 computers users since 2003, and more than 1,000 of them were computer users at 130 universities.

As Chris Null notes in his post on Steve Jobs' stand against Digital Rights Management (DRM), unwieldy restrictions on the use of purchased digital music, the recording industry association's litigious ways are going to destroy any remaining goodwill the music industry has with its customers.

Music services such as Ruckus and Napster are offering free music downloads while kids are in college to try to stem the flow of pirated songs on college campuses. But they come with restrictions that irk college students. The Ruckus songs must stay on your computer to be free; there's a fee to transfer them to MP3 players. And Napster offers free downloads to students—but the music is theirs to keep only while they're in school. If you want to keep a collection amassed during college, then you'll need to pay Napster in the end.

Seems the music industry's DRM approach is hitting a wall, but what's the answer? Maybe Amazon's rumored approach to sell unrestricted songs for a buck is the best shot. What do you think?

Pathetic.

Pure bullshyt is what it is. And I can promise all of you that the controversial Digital Rights Management (DRM) is going to make matters far worse. Like how in the hell the RIAA or Microsoft is really going to tell who's really gulity of what. Even the innocent owners of iPods can be gulity until proven innocent!

F*** the RIAA.

release something that is worth our money or fuck off

novabrkr said:

and hilarious.

PricelessHo said:

Exactly dude.

Its not even the music being "Worthy", its the way they advanced the media that has led to the decline in sales. And heres a great way to prove that, go out and buy a new cd release, say the new Robin Thicke cd as an example, OK, now go home record it to your computer or ipod, and then go on amazon and sell it, and you'll probably get almost what you paid for the cd in the store. So really you can do that and never spend anything on music at this point. U cant advance the technology and then expect it to behave the way you want it to. Its like the guy that invented heroin, it started as a medical drug, did he think it would become the biggest drug for addicts.

lastdecember said:

And lets not forget that for the same price of someone's album, we can settle for purchasing some kind of movie on DVD.....maybe for less if you like Wal-Mart or Target.

fucking RIAA.

i've had to stop all my illegal downloading because of several nasty letters from my college's OIT department- basically the RIAA monitors the campus network & will sue if the downloading gets too bad. i could still do it, but the connection would get shut off in my dorm. i'm using napster at the moment, and it's alright (except for when they don't have something i want ).

evenstar3 said:

i hope you got someone sending you stuff on the sly then lol

i wanted to say is it really different from the way people recorded a copy of a album on cassette for friends or a vhs dub of a movie? even tho it always clearly stated that arent supposed too lol. but these days its way different than all that.