In the article, Illegal music is costly for UW, Heather Laroi talks about the financial problems that many schools are having because of the illegal sharing and downloading of music in their networks. Sharing and downloading music is a serious crime. The RIAA, or Recording Industry Association of America, has a big problem with this issue and they say that schools need to be proactive and the problems with stop. If all the students in the universities network were notified about this then it would be easier to stop. But there is a big problem with getting the word out. In the last few years, UW-Madison has spent more than $300,000 to prevent the illegal downloading and sharing of music. It is very expensive for schools to go through the process of identifying individuals and verifying their identity.
This is a big problem for the University of Wisconsin and many other schools because there are a lot of people that are not aware of the downloading and sharing being a problem. Many people attend college not knowing the seriousness of this issue. There are some individuals who know it is illegal and some who do not, so sorting out the true criminals is difficult. Wisconsin is ranked in the top 10 for the copyright issues probably because it is such a large school and it is harder for the ones committing the crimes to get caught.
If it is such a big problem, I do not understand why they would not do more to get this known. If we are throwing away $330,000 on this then something is going wrong. We are just giving Madison a bad name to the RIAA and other big associations.
2 comments:
I did not realize what a big problem this was, especially at this university. Before reading the article I could not even tell you was the RIAA was or the number of fines they gave out per year. I think by this point that most students know it is illegal which was why I was surprised about the number of fines give to the Universities. I was also surprised that the burden of finding and punishing violators was on the shoulders of the universities. I am not sure it is the schools' responsibility.
As for the solution I am not quick sure. I think for the most part, kids are going to download things illegally because, as the article points out, it is expensive and time consuming to catch people. Therefore I am not sure it is even worth the universities’ money. What would really solve this problem?
The article talks about the illgal sharing and downloading of music and the financial strain school are going through to try and prevent this. It seems as if sharing and downloadng music with out paying for it is not that big of a deal but it is a crime that has spiraled out of control. A lot of the sharing and downloading of music is done by college students becuase lets face it college students are cheep and sharing music with friends and downloading illegaly is convenient. Universities are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to preven this but I do not think it is going to help. People know that downloading and sharing music is ilegal but they do it because they know they probably will not get caught. I think it is a waste of money for colleges to try and deal with this problem because I do not think it is their problem to deal with. The RIAA should be spending all of the money to try and prevent downloading and sharing music not the Universities. The Universities could use that money to benefin the school in so many other ways.
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