College students, the music industry strikes back!

Forgive me for this negative rant against the music industry. Yet again the RIAA is going after college students about free downloads. In a report by the Washington Post, the "industry" is attacking students because music is so popular right now and students accounted for roughly 1.3 billion illegal downloads occurred last year. So maybe illegal downloads are not the best thing for the industry at the moment (considering that many reports still bemoan the "death of the CD"), but attacking students is no great PR move.

Being that I was (and presumably some readers also were or are) once undergraduate students, I know personally the "benefit" downloading can have for university communities. This was in the time before YouTube and other video services, but when you can't afford a DVD or a CD of your favorite movie or album sometimes you bend the rules (or just flat out break them). Did we sell these items? No way. Do people? Yes, and I admit that is a problem.

Is illegal downloading a problem? Certainly. You won't find me advocating the free sharing of music and movies, but sometimes cracking down on pivotal consumers just seems plain wrong. It is a time like this when they should implement plans like I have reported on before. The "illegal networks" could so easily be transformed into legal outlets for musical exchange where snippets and previews are shared that inspire the purchase of legal downloads or physical CDs. It is times like these that I am reminded about how much work the music industry has to catch up to where their consumers are. I just wish I could be a bigger part of the solution, even though I buy and legal download far too much to meet my means. (If you read the report, you'll note that I am that in that group of students that cite lawsuits as their no. 1 or 2 reason for not downloading.)