Illegal Music Downloading: Is it Worth It?

The average college student has 809 illegally downloaded songs on their iPod or mp3 player. Some may even have thousands. In the past 3 years, the music and movie industry has brought on around 30,000 federal lawsuits against individuals. A majority of these lawsuits result in the accused having to pay millions of dollars. Recently, congress and the Recording Industry Association of America have been targeting students on university campuses. University officials are being forced to utilize filtering software to detect and monitor unwanted internet activity. College students are especially vulnerable because they utilize the schools internet service. Making it easy to detect who is doing what.

Why are the record companies targeting college students?

There are several reasons that make us the prime demographic to target. First, our generation grew up with computers. Every aspect of our live has the do with computers. For example, we communicate on social networking sites, we utilize the internet for research on projects and also we are accustomed to digital music making us more likely to download music illegally because it's readily accessible. Second, most college students have a limited amount of money. Most have to be as thrifty as possible. So it's only natural for college students to seek out free music. By illegally downloading music, college students play a risky game that can devastate their lives socially and financially.

Overall, it's important for us to be aware of the risks involved with obtaining music illegally.

We must be especially careful when on the internet seeing as how we are the intended target for most record companies. The risks that are involved are way too high for the benefit of downloading free music. The next time you download music, think about how your life could change if you were sued for millions of dollars for a couple of free songs.