There are about 900 million files available to download from peer-to-peer networks online for free, according to one Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) representative.
Jonathan Whitehead, legal counselor to the RIAA, said online piracy affects everyone from musicians to record store clerks and the record companies, to a crowd of 100 last night during a public forum.
He and four other panelists discussed illegal file sharing, Internet piracy and the technology that enables it to occur.
"How would you like to see the work of your life stolen?" asked Mike Negra, asking students to identify with the artists whose music is pirated on the Internet.
Negra, owner of the recently closed Mike's Music, 226 W. College Ave., said file sharing was the downfall of his business, costing him $2 million in sales and forcing him to lay off 12 employees. He said he spoke so students could put a face and a story behind what file sharing has done to one person and one store.
All on the panel agreed that artists need to be compensated for their work, but disagreed how to go about it.
Fred von Lohmann, legal representative of Morpheus, a popular peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing program, said the current way record companies try to enforce copyright violations is ineffective.
Artists have gotten no money after lawsuits against Napster and Aimster, said von Lohmann, and litigation has had no effect on file sharing.
"Fifty million people voted for [George W.] Bush in the presidential election," he said. "Sixty-one million Americans use Kazaa."
Von Lohmann discussed alternatives to suits filed against college students "for sums more than they would earn in their entire lives."
There should be a pool of money, he said, that would be divided up fairly so that the artists are paid. Fees could be assessed by a surcharge for Internet connections or, in a student's case, a few extra dollars on their tuition bill, he said.
This idea is not new, said von Lohmann. It is called a compulsory license and has been used for new technology such as satellite television and cable.
Whitehead said the RIAA pursues lawsuits against college students not because the record companies think they will earn money but to make sure people are aware that there are consequences to illegal downloading.
"We are not suing to get rich off of college students. If we wanted to get rich, they would be the last people we would sue," he said.
Russell Vaught, associate vice provost of Information Technology Services (ITS), explained Penn State's policy concerning copyrighted material and file sharing.
The ITS office receives 10-15 complaints per week, he said, and accused students lose their Internet access until the case is resolved with Judicial Affairs, Vaught said.
Vaught said Penn State provides the ANGEL system for fair use distribution of material, including syllabi and material distributed for academic courses.
There is also a bandwidth limit for people on the network: 1.5 gigabytes per week of download and 1.5 gigabytes of upload, Vaught said. Students who go over that limit are restricted in speed for a week following their first two warnings and face losing access if additional violations occur.
Matt Jackson, assistant professor of communications, said file sharing is a good thing though trading copyrighted music is bad. He argued the record industry should target people who upload and download the music instead of Internet service providers.
Targeting everyone hurts those who use it for legitimate reasons, he said.
Jackson and von Lohmann agreed that people who create new technology, like P2P networks, should not be targeted.
Jackson and Negra said incentives would have to be changed in order to make people pay for downloading songs.
Students attending the discussion said they did so for varying reasons. Andrew Stankovich (senior-electrical engineering) said that he likes to use Kazaa.
"I like to download free stuff and I wanted to hear what their arguments are against it," he said.
